"We typically know that the number of cases reported is lower than the actual [number of] incidents due to the difficulty survivors have with telling others of their assaults," Sexual Assault Counselor Gretchen Krull said. "It's probably just the tip of the iceberg."
Sensitive Crimes Investigator Ali Wicks agreed.
"Nationally, many fewer rapes are reported than actually happen, just like on our campus," she said.
Krull explained that the way sexual assaults are reported is a reason for the College's lower numbers. The Justice Department's study was conducted through anonymous telephone calls, while the College gets its statistics through an "anonymous centralized reporting system."
"The reports are made without names," Krull said. "If someone reports an incident to an RC, peer advocate, area coordinator, dean of students, coach, mental health professional or counselor, we collect this data."
This method of reporting explains the College's lower numbers, Krull said, because it's based on reports whereas "the other is a survey where you're asking people their experience." In addition, the survey results reflect incidents that occurred in a semester, whereas the College's statistics reflect a year's sexual assault reports. The report states that if the number of victimizations reported is projected over the length of a college experience, the statistics could rise to between one in four to one in five women experiencing victimization during her college career.
"These statistics are similar to those reported by Mary Koss in her 1988 Ms. magazine survey," Krull said.
Carter pointed out that the College's "third party reports"-those made to students such as the Peer Advocates of Sexual Respect, the Disciplinary Advocates and resident counselors-are carefully studied to make sure that different sources are not reporting duplicate sex offenses, a problem known as double-counting.
Wicks said that she thinks that "a lot of strength in how [the College approaches] sexual assault incidents comes from how closely all the departments work together."
"I have a lot of confidence in our reporting," she said. "We work very hard to make sure that people's reports are recorded."
At the College, 13 women reported forcible sex offenses in 1997, 10 in 1998 and 12 in 1999, according to Carter.
Michelle Oliveros-Larsen '02, who is a Peer Advocate of Sexual Respect, said she was "definitely dismayed and frightened that, even over the years of becoming more aware, the numbers are not necessarily going down in proportion to our education going up."
Oliveros-Larsen said that she is concerned that "a lot of women don't consider things that happen to them [to be] rape that really are, because we're talking about a lot of coercion and a lot of date rape."
The national study combined two different surveys for measuring the nature and extent of sexual assaults on college women. All 4,446 women randomly selected for the main survey were students attending two- or four-year colleges when they answered telephone survey questions in late February and early May in 1997.
The overall study analyzed the factors that place women at risk of being sexually assaulted in any of a dozen different ways. The study defined sexual victimization as experiences ranging from completed or attempted rape to threats of rape, threatened sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact with force or the threat of force and stalking.
The researchers reported that the number of incidents in which female college students were sexually victimized occurred at a rate of 35.3 incidents per 1,000.
The report also found that nearly 60 percent of the rapes that occurred on campuses took place in the victims' residences, and yet fewer than five percent of rapes and attempted rapes were reported to law-enforcement officials.