(Newswire.net — October 28, 2014) — Massachusetts Institute of Technology is among one of the first universities to conduct research on sexual assault and rape. MIT urged all of its 10,831 undergraduate and graduate students to take the survey, however, only 35 percent were willing to do so. Results showed alarming data that one out of six female undergraduates have been sexually abused, and less than five per cent reported the crime.
MIT started the survey after a former student wrote anonymously in the student newspaper that she had been raped on campus.
“Sexual assault violates our core MIT values,” MIT President Rafael Reif wrote in a campus email, “It has no place here,” he added.
Just two days after MIT emailed the survey, the White House called on colleges and universities to ask students about sexual harassment and crimes.
With one in five students falling victim to sexual assault during their college years, the White House has declared sex crimes to be “epidemic” on US college campuses. The survey also asked students whether or not they confided in or discussed the assault with friends or others.
“We are interested in learning about the problem, measuring it and solving it,” MIT Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart said on a teleconference call with reporters.
She said the school was expanding prevention and education efforts as it continued to mine the data, and that it planned to conduct follow-up surveys.
There is a certain sense of confusion about what constitutes sexual assault, Barnhart noted. In order to intensify the discussion and to find a way to contain such incidents, the school released the poll, she said.
According to the results, nearly two-thirds of the respondents who had encountered sexual assault said they had told someone about it, but less than 5 percent officially reported the incident.
The school has added new resources to help students who have experienced an unwanted sexual assault, said Barnhart, she added that raising awareness was paying off noting that more incidents have been reported over the past few months.