In a rare, detailed look at sexual assault and harassment on a university campus, M.I.T. revealed Monday that among undergraduates who replied to a survey, at least 17 percent of women and 5 percent of men said they had been sexually assaulted.
That is similar to the findings of a handful of other studies, including a frequently cited survey in which 19 percent of undergraduate women said they had experienced sexual assault, or attempted sexual assault. But there have been few surveys that looked at experiences and attitudes at particular colleges — and victim advocates said they knew of none with the clarity and depth of the M.I.T. survey.
“This is the best one I’ve seen, and I really commend M.I.T. for doing it, and publishing the results,” said Colby Bruno, senior counsel at the Victim Rights Law Center, who has handled many campus cases.
Activists against sexual assault have argued that such campus “climate” surveys are crucial to exposing the extent of the problem, and such surveys were among the steps proposed this year by both a White House task force and a bipartisan group of senators.
“Sure, the data tells us things that we maybe didn’t want to hear,” said Cynthia Barnhart, chancellor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But she said one of the clearest — and most disturbing — conclusions she drew from the results was that “there is confusion among some of our students about what constitutes sexual assault,” indicating a need for more open discussion.
[For more of this story, written by Richard Perez-Pena, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10...assault-at-mit-.html]
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