A quick search for terms like "campus safety" and "sexual assault" on the Apple App Store reveals dozens of applications marketed toward worried college students. Circle of 6 allows users to send text message alerts to six pre-selected friends. VizSafe lets users post and watch videos of areas they might feel are unsafe. OnWatch provides a suite of safety and reporting tools -- for $19.99.
And it's not just mobile apps. From risk management firms to educational programs to products like fingernail polish that can detect date rape drugs, students and administrators have an increasing number of supposed prevention methods to choose from. Driven by a greater level of legal and federal scrutiny in recent years, a cottage industry is growing around campus sexual assault.
Companies and firms dealing with sexual assault prevention have been expanding rapidly over the past few years, following the release of the Education Department's Dear Colleague letter in 2011, said Dana Bolger, co-founder ofKnow Your Title IX, a student advocacy group. The letter served as the federal government's call to action about campus sexual assault, Bolger said, and "schools started getting scared the law might actually be enforced for once."
In the last decade the University Risk Management and Insurance Association's membership has more than doubled. One of the largest firms, the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, has worked with 3,000 campus clients, according to its co-founder and president, Brett Sokolow. The Association of Title IX Coordinators, or ATIXA, was also founded by Sokolow and has trained more than 2,000 Title IX investigators since the Dear Colleague letter announced that the federal government would be leveraging Title IX to combat campus sexual assault. NCHERM is also a law firm, currently representing 50 colleges and universities.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/08/27/pressure-colleges-deal-sexual-assault-leads-growing-cottage-industry