Female college students have a greater chance to be sexually assaulted while on campus than women who aren’t students.

The Sexual Aggression Peer Advocates use the statistic that one in four women in the nation will be sexually assaulted over the course of their lifetime. However, one in four women attending college will be assaulted during their 4 to 5 years there.

“Incidents are higher at a college level than in women that did not go to college,” said Steve Thompson, coordinator of Sexual Assault Services and associate professor of physical education and sport.

Thompson said the one-in-four statistic is a conservative estimate based on several large research projects.

“There has been newer research that says 62 percent of women (will face sexual aggression in their lifetime), but we don’t use that because the numbers have not been duplicated,” he said.

The local statistics SAPA uses come from actual contacts with the organization. The number of reports have steadily increased since the founding of SAPA in 1997, which Thompson said is not because more incidents are necessarily occurring, but more students are willing to come forward to report them.

“At first, we had fewer than a dozen (sexual aggression incidents reported), and last semester, we had 154,” Thompson said. “As SAPA’s reputation (and) the knowledge and the confidence in our student body has increased, so has the prospect for people to come forward and talk to us.”

Another statistic given in

SAPA’s programs is that a campus the size of CMU experiences 21 assaults per week.

Three-year advocate Mary Hill, a Gaylord senior, said there does not seem to be a trend in one specific type of sexual aggression.

“It changes year to year and semester to semester,” Hill said. “What people see more of depends on the day and the type of phone call that you get.”

Susanne Stefanski, a sexual aggression counselor, was a SAPA member in 1999.

“When we started, we didn’t have many advocates,” she said. “The number of people that first got involved was around six or seven. We now have over 40 students volunteering their time. That’s a huge advance. We have people that apply for the program now that we just can’t take because there are too many people.”

The counseling center Stefanski works in is reserved for students who request counseling in matters of depression, anxiety, roommate concerns, crisis situations and the like.

SAPA has been a part of the services since last spring.

“People always express surprise when they hear the statistics,” Hill said. “But it’s not surprising anymore. The statistics pretty much speak for themselves.”

cfoyt@cm-life.com

E-mail the author: defaultuser