Sexual Assault on College Campuses

The topics I brainstormed in class for P3 were sexual assault, gun control, social media and obesity. Sexual assault is the topic that interests me the most. I am staying within the course theme of Ethics in Higher Education but I came up with a question that is not presented much in the book.

The research question I came up with was: Do perpetrators on college campuses receive a fair punishment for their actions? I knew that sexual assault was the topic I wanted to write about because the issue concerns me and I have done a lot of research on the victim side of sexual assault. I am aware of the impact that sexual assault has on victims because I have friends that have personally faced this issue. I also wrote P2 on sexual assault but my main focus was on the victims rather than the assailants. I wanted to learn about the other side of the issue in order to gain a better perspective of the perpetrator’s side. I looked up topics related to sexual assault and remember reading about the issue with perpetrators’ punishments in Ethics in Higher Education. I wanted to dig deeper into the issue of the punishment process for perpetrators. The more general topic of my question would be sexual assault.

Potential stakeholders for my topic would be WGAC, the deans of Colorado State, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), policy makers and possibly the court system. The stakeholders that interest me the most would be either policy makers or the court system. I think I would rather convince a stakeholder that agrees with my issue because the act of sexual assault is in no way shape or form acceptable under any circumstance. There have been a shocking amount of sexaul assault cases where the perpetrator walked away with little to no punishment at all. In the image below, the number of perpetrators who walk free out of every 1000 cases is shown.

“Out of Every 1000 Rapes, 994 Perpetrators Will Walk Free”. Image. RAINN. Matador    Network. 2006. Print.

My main concerns moving into P3 are finding enough databases for my specific question and being able to hold a strong argument and convince my stakeholder to take action. I think narrowing down my searches by the Morgan Library database I will be able to find helpful documents. In order to convince my stakeholders, I think I need to focus on the exigency of punishment for perpetrators. I believe the number one issue relating to perpetrators would be whether or not they receive fair punishments. There are things that can be done in class that can help me with my main concerns. I think we will discuss stakeholders more which would help me a lot. After realizing that the lack of punishment for perpetrators is a recurring issue for sexual assaults on college campuses, I want to research why they deserve harsher punishment. Aside from implementing ways to prevent sexual assault on college campuses, the next step towards  creating safer campuses is harsher punishment for those who perform the act.