Photo: Jonathan Perugia/REX USA.Columbia University recorded nearly 30 complaints of sexual assault over the past year. But, according to a new report released by the university, only two of the alleged attackers were found guilty of non-consensual sexual contact. No one has been found guilty of rape.
Between the federal Title IX complaint issued against the university by 23 students back in April to senior Emma Sulkowicz's courageous "mattress performance," the school has been a major player in the campus sexual-assault epidemic. While releasing this kind of data might seem like a big step forward, some students are calling out the report's lack of details.
"In terms of the way it's presented, there's no information on serial rapes," Sulkowicz, whose alleged rapist reportedly has two other complaints against him, told the Columbia Spectator . "That means that, say if one person attacks three women, we have no way of knowing whether all those women are lumped into one case or whether they're counted separately. And, the way the data is shown, it makes me think it's the first option."
For others, the lack of specifics on how the school responded to individual cases makes it difficult to feel any safer than before. "I'm glad to see this information is being released, but I don't think that this report answered many of the questions students had raised," Columbia senior Sejal Singh told The Huffington Post. "Without information on the sanctions, there's no way to hold the university accountable."