A petition to compel Dartmouth College to enforce more serious repercussions on students who commit acts of sexual violence has topped 50,000 signatures.
The petition, which was launched Monday by women's rights organization Ultra Violet, began after a Dartmouth student was sexually assaulted after her name was mentioned in a "rape guide" posted on a website frequented by students at the college.
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It asks for the administration to "expel rapists, list rape as a punishable offense and expulsion as the preferred punishment in the student handbook, and block access to the 'rape guide' on campus."
News of the petition began to spread after a group of students known as Real Talk Dartmouth were called into disciplinary hearings with the school after they held a protest against the way Dartmouth has addressed sexual assault, racism and homophobia on campus, according to ThinkProgress. Members of the group received death and rape threats on a student forum after their rally, but they claim the school is treating them more harshly than those who threatened them.
This latest furor is the second time in less than a year Dartmouth has found itself at the center of a sexual assault controversy. The Department of Education began investigating Dartmouth's response to sexual assault on campus last May after a group of students and alumni filed a complaint saying the school had violated the Clery Act, a law that requires colleges and universities to track campus crime.
The University of Virginia, Swarthmore College, the University of North Carolina, Yale University, Occidental College, Amherst College, Wesleyan University and the University of California, Berkeley, have all come under fire for similar reasons over the past two years. Claims that the schools have not properly treated or tracked sexual assault victims have led to a slew of formal federal complaints, federal investigations, lawsuits, new school policies and investigations within the universities themselves.
On March 8, Dartmouth President Philip Hanlon proposed mandatory expulsion for anyone who forces another person to have sex, which was one of the petition's demands. Expulsion is currently a part of the administrations proposed changes to its policies.
"We investigate every instance of sexual assault reported to the college and offer multiple levels of support and resources to every survivor," Justin Anderson, Dartmouth's assistant vice president for media relations, said in a statement on the school's website. Later, he added, "At Dartmouth, we believe that one sexual assault is one too many. Over the last three years we have more than doubled support and prevention resources addressing sexual assault and are deeply committed to ridding our campus of this scourge."
But earlier in the same statement, Anderson tried to distance the school from the incident that stemmed from the rape guide.
"It is important to note the offending post was authored by a single individual and did not appear on a Dartmouth-hosted site, nor is it one run by Dartmouth students," Anderson wrote.
Dartmouth's full proposal for a revision of the school's sexual assault prevention policy will be posted on its website and its community is invited to submit comment before April 14.
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