A new survey conducted at the University of Oregon and 26 other colleges confirms what's already been found out-- 1 in 5 students has experienced some kind of sexual assault. The results were released Monday a week before the U of O fall term begins.
The survey by the Association of American Universities, or AAU, found similar results across 27 of its member schools. At the UO, 14.5 percent of student respondents reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact-- undergraduate women were more likely to be victimized.
Robin Holmes is Vice President for Student Life at the UO. She says this is a big problem they're working to address with education:
Holmes: "What we're trying to do is make sure that students are receiving this information in a lot of different forms from us, from their peers, in writing, in person in innovative. Then we also have increased our resources significantly in terms of investigation, in terms of prevention."
The AAU survey a response rate of 13.9 percent at the U of O. Recent sexual assault surveys conducted locally by UO Professor Jennifer Freyd and her team had higher rates of response-- 26 percent. But the results were similar.