Creating More Ideal College Campuses for Sexual Assault Survivors by Taking Into Account Intersectionality and Multiracial Feminism
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Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2015 Sexual Assault and Academic Achievement: Creating More Ideal College Campuses for Sexual Assault Survivors by Taking Into Account Intersectionality and Multiracial Feminism Kelly Pinter Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Criminology Commons Recommended Citation Pinter, Kelly, "Sexual Assault and Academic Achievement: Creating More Ideal College Campuses for Sexual Assault Survivors by Taking Into Account Intersectionality and Multiracial Feminism" (2015). Dissertations. 1487. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/1487 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2015 Kelly Pinter LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO SEXUAL ASSAULT AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT: CREATING MORE IDEAL COLLEGE CAMPUSES FOR SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVIVORS BY TAKING INTO ACCOUNT INTERSECTIONALITY AND MULTIRACIAL FEMINISM A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN SOCIOLOGY BY KELLY PINTER CHICAGO, ILLINOIS MAY 2015 Copyright by Kelly Pinter, 2015 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all of the people who have made this dissertation possible, starting with Dr. Judith Wittner. Judy not only read numerous drafts of this work, but her thoughtful suggestions, encouragement, and drive to push me, made me an even better scholar. I would also like to thank Dr. Lazarus-Black for being my mentor and true friend both before and during this process. She was the first person to plant the seed of graduate school in my mind, and as a first generation college student, there is no way that I would have gone half as far as I did in academia without her support. I also want to thank Dr. Lisa Frohmann and Dr. Jennifer Parks for selflessly serving on my committee. Their ample encouragement and dedication to me as their student was obvious. I am forever thankful to these four strong women, not only for making this work possible, but for helping mold me into the feminist scholar, educator, and activist that I am today. In addition to the supportive committee that I had the pleasure of working with, I also want to thank my feminist comrades. These are the women and men that I have met in everyday life as well as those at colleges and universities including Loyola University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Chicago, the College of Lake County, and Harper College. These friends and colleagues reminded me that I can do anything that I put my mind to. They not only listened to me as I nervously practiced before conference presentations and told me to never give up on this work, but they sat and drank coffee with me in their free time, came to my babies' birthday parties, and gave iii me the gift of friendship that will last our lifetimes. I love them more than words could ever express. I also want to thank my remarkable family. My parents Dawn and Rick Pinter altered their entire lives for years in order to witness this day. They helped to nurture my children and even let my family live with them for a time, just to make sure that I was given a fighting chance at completing this dissertation as a mother with two children under the age of five. My loyal in-laws, Cindy and Mark Gira were also an enormous help with the kids, when I needed some uninterrupted time to write. Additionally, I want to thank my two lovely children, Hanalei and Dexter, for giving me a reason to keep on going no matter how arduous this process was at times. Their tiny faces reminded me that by getting this doctorate, they would also have the proof that they are capable of anything that they put your minds to. I thank them for being my world. Also, my companion, Adam Gira has been my rock. I know that this process has been difficult for him too, but I feel that it has brought us even closer together. Through this progression, we have learned to be an even sturdier team who supports one another through thick and thin. I want to thank Adam for being my cheerleader, best friend, and the love of my life. I look forward to many more years with him, as well as many more date nights, now that this dissertation is completed. Upon concluding, I want to thank the courageous and inspirational sexual assault survivors who took the time to talk to me about the difficulty of dealing with this crime. Sometimes through tears, they shared their most agonizing recollections in order to support others who will or do walk in their shoes every day. I am eternally inspired by them. Without the survivors, this work would not be. iv This work is dedicated to the 28 sexual assault survivors who made this work a reality. Thank you. Sexual violence is more than just a crime against individuals. It threatens our families. It threatens our communities; ultimately, it threatens the entire country. It tears apart the fabric of our communities. And that’s why we’re here today – because we have the power to do something about it as a government, as a nation. We have the capacity to stop sexual assault, support those who have survived it, and bring perpetrators to justice. —Barack Obama, The White House Task Force Report of 2014 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii LIST OF TABLES ix CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH PROJECT 1 Introduction 4 Definition of Terms 6 The Prevalence, Consequences and Underreporting of Sexual Assault and the Anti-Rape Movement 6 Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the Study, Gap in Knowledge 13 Primary Research Questions 15 Methodology and Procedures 15 The Interviewees 22 Limitations 24 Location of the Study 25 Review of Instrument and How It Was Validated 27 Theoretical Framework 29 Assumptions 32 Limitations and Generalizability 32 Summary 33 CHAPTER TWO: SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS AND PERCEPTIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT 36 In-group Survivors’ Views on Rape 40 Out-group Views on Rape 50 In-group Views on Reporting and In-group Offenders 57 Out-group Views on Reporting 59 Aftercare 61 CHAPTER THREE: HOW PERCEPTIONS OF RACE AND ETHNICITY INFLUENCE SEXUAL ASSAULT CASES 69 How Race and Ethnicity Affect Survivors’ Sexual Assault Cases 72 Racial Hostility Between Victim and Offender 82 Campus Emails about Crime and Race 87 Race and Punishment 92 Violence and Culture 94 Conclusion 107 CHAPTER FOUR: HOW PERCEPTIONS OF GENDER INFLUENCE SEXUAL ASSAULT CASES 112 Liars 114 Survivors as Objects 118 Sluts 120 vii Survivor Blamed Herself Because of Her Attire 120 Dependents 127 Survivors with a Voice 136 Advocates 143 Violators 147 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION 152 Survivors’ Suggestions on How to Deal with Sexual Assault on Campus 152 Protecting Survivors 153 Simplifying Their Lives 159 Survivors’ Perceptions about Healing after the Crime 162 Survivors’ Perceptions about Whom Universities Should Hire to Work with Victims after a Sexual Assault Occurs 164 Summary of the Dissertation 169 Future Research 171 APPENDIX A: DISSERTATION INTERVIEW GUIDE 175 APPENDIX B: SURVIVOR QUESTIONAIRE 183 REFERENCE LIST 190 VITA 203 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Respondent Identified In-group and Out-group Characteristics 37 Table 2. References to Race and/or Ethnicity by Interviewees in Relation to Sexual Assault Cases 73 Table 3. Subject of Reference for Survivors Who Talked About Race and/or Ethnicity (N=12) in Relation to Sexual Assault Cases 74 Table 4. Examples of Rape Culture 97 ix CHAPTER ONE OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH PROJECT Countless college campuses are providing incompetent aid to college sexual assault survivors. According to Leslie Gomez, a sexual assault policy consultant, many campuses are failing in the same capacities, including absence of clarity, student mistreatment, bewildering procedures, and poor training among those commanding the processes on campus (Grinberg 2014). Currently, 94 colleges and universities in the United States are under investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights for the mishandling of sexual assault on their campuses (Ng 2015). According to Bonnie S. Fisher, professor of criminal justice at the University of Cincinnati, It just hasn’t been on most university administrator’s agendas; they don’t know how to approach it, and they just haven’t taken the time to be informed…It’s just another issue on their desks that they’re hoping doesn’t cause a loss of students or bad media attention. (Pérez-Peña and Taylor 2014) The University of California at Berkeley was one example of inadequacy. Berkeley had been accused of failing to investigate sexual assault cases and instead allowing named offenders to graduate early (Grinberg 2014). In response, Dr. Dirks, chancellor of UC Berkeley, said that Berkeley was able to fix many of the issues that survivors were facing quite easily. For example, it was not too difficult to balance a student’s wish for privacy against his or her request that the university enforce physical estrangement between the victim and the offender (Pérez-Peña and Taylor 2014). There are countless stories of survivors being re-traumatized by school officials. 1 2 One survivor was asked why she did not come forward with the assault complaint sooner. Administrators suggested that this woman was acting as a malicious ex-girlfriend and not as a truthful survivor (Grinberg 2014).