Sexual climate survey results for University of Missouri System campuses are released

Nearly one in four female students at schools that participated in a national survey about sexual conduct on college campuses reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact by force, threat of force or while incapacitated since they enrolled at their university, according to data released Monday.

At the University of Missouri in Columbia, close to one in three female students who are seniors reported such experiences, according to the survey.

The University of Missouri System on Monday released the results of sexual climate surveys done in April at all four of its campuses — Kansas City, St. Louis, Rolla and Columbia.

The Columbia campus was the only one of the schools in the system to participate in campus climate research conducted by the Association of American Universities.

Its survey estimated that 30.8 percent of MU’s senior females have been incapacitated or forced into nonconsensual sexual contact that ranged from unwanted kissing to sexual assault since enrolling at the school.

MU was one of 27 AAU-member institutions involved in the association’s national survey.

The three other Missouri campuses, which are not AAU members, participated in a similar survey designed by the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management and administered by the Assessment Research Center.

The university system released all the campus results on Monday.

In a statement, MU officials said they were seeking to “understand the prevalence of sexual assault and misconduct occurring on MU’s campus, to gauge student views related to MU’s climate surrounding sexual assault and misconduct, and to assess student knowledge of MU’s resources and procedures when responding to instances of misconduct.”

All of the campus surveys focused on understanding student views and attitudes regarding consent and sexual conduct and were designed to give university officials a clearer picture of how students are affected by Title IX issues of gender discrimination.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits sex discrimination, including sexual assault and harassment, on campus.

The surveys also were intended to let school officials know how much students know about campus resources and procedures when responding to instances of misconduct. According to the AAU survey, about a quarter of the student respondents generally believe they were knowledgeable about the resources available related to sexual assault and misconduct.

The University of Missouri-Kansas City sexual climate survey found that 55 of the 1,672 respondents — mostly female undergraduates who live in nonuniversity housing — said they have experienced nonconsensual sexual contact, and 38 said they experienced nonconsensual intercourse.

The UMKC survey said 40 students experienced violence from a sexual partner or someone they were dating.

The largest number of students, 68, said they had been sexually harassed on campus by another student, faculty or staff member. Three percent of them said the harassment was in the form of “severe sexist remarks or jokes about a particular gender,” according to survey results. It also said that the most prevalent forms of stalking reported were text messages and phone calls.

Only 24.8 percent of more than 6,000 UMKC students who had access to the survey participated.

“We are pretty pleased with the response rate. It gives us a baseline,” said Mikah Thompson, UMKC’s Title IX coordinator, responsible since February for monitoring gender discrimination on the campus.

Thompson said she was concerned that less than half the survey participants said they would intervene to stop sexual misconduct. “That means that we need to teach students to step up and speak out when they see or hear something inappropriate,” Thompson said.

The national survey found that rates of sexual assault and misconduct were highest among undergraduate females and those identifying as transgender, queer or nonconforming, or questioning. The risk of the most serious types of sexual assault, due to physical force or incapacitation, declined among upper-class students, the AAU report said.

The AAU survey found that overall, 11.7 percent of more than 150,000 female and male respondents across its participating member universities reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact by physical force, threats of physical force, or incapacitation since they enrolled at their university.

Among the one in four female undergraduate respondents who experienced such incidents, 10.8 percent experienced penetration, the survey said.

Survey results showed, too, that this type of sexual assault interrupts a student’s learning.

The UMKC survey report said that of the students involved in a nonconsensual sexual contact experience or nonconsensual sexual intercourse experience, 40 percent of both groups reported missing class, assignments or exams as a result. And “after nonconsensual sexual contact, approximately two-thirds of respondent victims reported experiencing anxiety and anger,” the survey report said.

The University of Missouri System has committed $2.2 million in recurring funding for addressing gender-based violence.

The Columbia campus and UMKC are establishing teams of peer educators who, once properly trained, would go out among the student body and teach other students about consent and sexual misconduct and how to report it.

“Students learn from each other,” said Ellen Eardley, the Title IX coordinator at MU. Eardley said the MU survey “shows we have a lot of work to do educating students about what consent is” and about resources available on campus.

At the four system campuses, students are required to participate in an online sexual conduct training. UMKC puts a hold on students’ accounts until they complete the online training.

Last week, the University of Missouri released its first accounting of the number of possible incidents of sex discrimination reported to its Title IX office.

The report covered August 2014 through July 2015, during which time MU logged 300-plus reports of possible sex discrimination that ranged from rape to dating violence to bullying. Of those, 33 complaints moved forward and three were still being investigated at midsummer. MU has vowed to collect this information in an annual record to track Title IX cases.

This story was originally published September 21, 2015 at 12:07 PM with the headline "Sexual climate survey results for University of Missouri System campuses are released."