Call it a sign of the times that right along with required writing core courses, incoming freshmen at most schools this fall will also face a mandatory crash course on the subject of sexual assault.
At a Rutgers University orientation, for example, every freshman sits through a dramatization of the campus party scene that is as real as it is raw. In the performance, a character, Jess, winds up in fellow student Ryan's room, resisting his advances. Ryan persists and gets increasingly angry and aggressive. The scene ends with the Jess character wailing, and with students in the audience wide-eyed and stunned.
"We get some students who are shocked and are saying, 'Does this really happen?' 'Is this really what it really looks like?' " says Brady Root, Rutgers' sexual assault prevention coordinator. "We're talking about a small number people that are behaving this way, but they're doing it a lot."
Collecting more precise data on sexual assault is one of the new requirements schools are facing. Felicia McGinty, Rutgers' vice chancellor for student affairs, says the new focus on sexual assault brings a lot of new pressure, but she says framing it as a national problem also gives schools more cover as they confront it.
"The good thing about where we are now is that it gives us permission to have these conversations openly. It's not the dirty little thing that we don't talk about anymore," McGinty says.
Read more at NPR: http://www.npr.org/2014/08/12/339822696/how-campus-sexual-assaults-came-to-command-new-attention