Sexual Assault Prevalence and Community College Students: Challenges and Promising Practices

Abstract

Recently, much research has been dedicated to understanding how to prevent and address the aftermath of sexual assault (SA) on traditional 4-year college and university campuses in the United States. However, less scholarly attention has been paid to 2-year institutions, commonly known as community colleges. This review illuminates the different situational contexts faced by community college students, compared with students at 4-year colleges. These differences are shaped by community college characteristics, student demographics, and geographic location of their students. Community colleges enroll a higher percentage of women, first-generation students, and low-income students than 4-year colleges. Furthermore, community colleges are academic homes to the most racially and ethnically diverse student population, with higher numbers of African Americans, Latinos, immigrants, and nonnative English speakers. These populations (e.g., women, racial minorities, first-generation, low-income) are at a greater risk for SA; yet, 2-year institutions have less funding and resources available to address SA on their campuses. Thus, this article reviews the problem of campus SA on community colleges and highlights the challenges that 2-year institutions face in comparison with those that 4-year institutions face when implementing SA prevention and response strategies. Then, a case study of a 3-year project on one nonresidential and seven community colleges is presented, which illustrates how 2-year institutions can forge relationships with community professionals to address SA on their campuses.

A Collaborative Community College Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Effort: Climate Study Results to Assess Impact

“…Despite limited research detailing sexual violence prevalence on community college campuses, climate study data from 27 four-year colleges (Cantor et al, 2015) and seven 2-year colleges (Howard et al, 2018) show that students attending 4- and 2-year institutions face high rates of sexual violence victimization (Cantor et al, 2015; Howard et al, 2018; Potter, Fox, et al, 2020). Rates of sexual assault and harassment were comparable, although Cantor and colleagues (2015) did not distinguish between perpetrators of sexual harassment (SH; i.e., faculty and staff or fellow students).…”

“…The 3-year sexual violence prevention and response collaboration effort was initiated in 2017 and involved the establishment of taskforces at seven community colleges, along with scientifically verifiable sexual assault prevention plans, which aligned with the recommendations of the White House Taskforce to Protect Students From Sexual Assault (2017). For more details about this initiative, see Potter, Fox, and colleagues (2020). The purpose of this article is to assess the impact of this multilevel approach to community college response and prevention efforts.…”

“…Members of the research team also met with the TAG each month for 2 to 3 hr (Potter, Fox, et al, 2020). During these meetings, the research team and TAG reviewed the prevention and response work on the seven campuses and identified areas where TAG members could provide expertise on the campus efforts (for more details about these meetings, see Potter, Fox, et al, 2020). The number of interactions (i.e., emails, phone calls, and in-person conversations) TAG members had with campus taskforces was tracked for funding purposes.…”

“…While not all community colleges are classified as 2-year colleges (and not all 2-year colleges are classified as community colleges), in this article, we use the terms 2-year college and community college interchangeably. With few exceptions, sexual violence prevalence, including sexual assault, dating violence, stalking, and harassment, among community college students has been understudied (Howard et al, 2018; Potter, Fox, et al, 2020; Potter, Moschella, et al, 2020; Voth Schrag & Edmond, 2018). Yet, this research illustrates that sexual violence prevalence rates at 2-year institutions are similar to or higher than prevalence rates at 4-year colleges (Cantor et al, 2015; Howard et al, 2018; Voth Schrag & Edmond, 2018).…”

“…The multilevel initiative used a social-ecological approach that established community college prevention and response collaborations at the state, community, and campus level. Since community colleges have public safety officers, rather than law enforcement officials, state attorney general staff, local law enforcement, and community college representatives worked together to develop plans to respond to campus violence, including the establishment of memorandums of understanding (MOUs) between community colleges and local law enforcement (Howard et al, 2018; Potter, Fox, et al, 2020). In addition, this collaboration resulted in the establishment and revision of existing campus sexual violence policies and protocols.…”