Backed by Vermont’s first woman attorney general
by Holly Sullivan, for the Community News Service
Senate lawmakers want to pass a bill to expand sexual misconduct prevention on college campuses — after shelving it last session amid scrutiny from schools and survivor advocates.
S.120 was introduced last session, but committee members decided to put a pin in it and consult reps from universities, students and sexual violence prevention specialists this past summer. Lawmakers in the education committee introduced a reworked version Feb. 23. It passed out of Senate Education on March 15, just making the crossover deadline. It’s now in Appropriations.
So far the bill has been well received and the University of Vermont is expected to present a new draft for legislators to chew on next week.
Attorney General Charity Clark did not testify last session, but she spoke to committee members Feb. 29 about her support for S.120 and personal connection to the issue — running for Vermont attorney general as the first woman on the Democratic ticket.
Her stump speech included the following line, which she recounted to lawmakers: “No attorney general had known before what it’s like to walk to your car in a dark parking lot, holding your keys in that special way that all women know.”
Clark said that her message demonstrated that sexual violence prevention is a statewide issue — regardless of sex.
“For men, it resonated because it was such a foreign concept,” she said. “And for women, because they knew exactly what I was talking about.”
Clark wants to make college campuses safer, and she appreciated state colleges’ willingness to work on the bill.
“I’m just really glad to see the work being done,” she said. “And I especially applaud the colleges who are coming with the spirit of collaboration and humility in spite of the fact that college campuses are the setting of these violent crimes.”
S.120 has garnered general support from sexual violence prevention advocates, but people are split on whether the bill should include a section requiring colleges to conduct campus climate surveys.
Emily McCarthy, a Title IX coordinator at the University of Vermont, urged committee members to remove the section on Feb. 23. McCarthy, along with a college student, looked at examples of campus climate surveys and agreed the sample survey seemed harmful to victims.
“Some of those sample surveys felt really intimidating towards students based on (the) level of detail for the questions asked and the number of questions,” she said. “We really feared (the surveys) would be retraumatizing for a student, especially when given to them in a very cold way, not in a supportive environment.”
Student data from Jennifer Barquist, a public affairs vice president for the regional branch of Planned Parenthood, contradicts McCarthy’s claim.
“We know from talking with many students that they would really appreciate the opportunity to share their experiences with sexual harm to help ensure their experience is not repeated and to promote positive changes on our campuses,” Barquist said during the same meeting.
She supports the provision as long as students can opt out at any time and that their privacy rights are made clear in the survey.
Despite provisional disagreements, all speakers seemed to support the meat of the bill — requiring colleges to address sexual violence on their campuses.
“When it comes to sexual violence, women 18 to 24 are four times more likely than other age groups to experience sexual violence,” Clark said during her testimony.
“I think that we have this opportunity — all of us who are working on this bill — to honor (young people’s) voices and make steps in a direction that removes this culture of silence from campuses,” she said.
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