Enabling the Prevention and Reporting of Sexual Assault at Maryland Colleges and Universities
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Date
2020-01-01
Type of Work
Department
School of Public Policy
Program
Public Policy
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Distribution Rights granted to UMBC by the author.
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
Abstract
In this dissertations, I work to expand social understanding of sexual assault occurrence and reporting challenges on college and university campuses. In an ideal world, sexual assault would be extremely rare, and reporting of those assaults would result in supportive experiences for impacted persons, contributing to a culture of care. To move toward this culture, I apply the theoretical concept of enabling conditions (Correa & Petchesky 1994) to sexual assault occurrence and reporting at University System of Maryland Institutions. Enabling conditions is a perspective that expands our understanding of individual behavior to include the social contexts in which behaviors take place. One of the key mechanisms through which HEIs facilitate or influence individual behavior is via policy. Policies outline a set of values in the form of acceptable and non-acceptable behaviors. Policies codify norms and layout a system of sanctions for violating the requirements within them. Therefore, policies provide key information on what values are being facilitated or enabled on campus: sexual assault supportive or sexual assault preventative. This dissertations aims to do several things. First, I expand the theory of enabling conditions as a set of not only individual but institutional values that reflect or resist biases. Second, I analyze HEI sexual misconduct policies to determine if these values are present and to what degree they are present. Third, not all values are clearly expressed in policies and therefore, I look for evidence of enabling conditions on portions of institution websites. To achieve these goals, I use qualitative content analysis and examine the ten schools within the University System of Maryland. I conducted two complimentary analyses. The first is a content analysis of each institution's sexual misconduct policy and the second is an analysis of each school's respective website content dealing with sexual assault. I used a hybrid coding approach where codes for enabling conditions were sought out while also allowing other relevant themes to emerge throughout the analysis (Glaser and Strauss 1967).
I found that enabling conditions are not frequently addressed in the sexual misconduct policies of this sample of schools or on their respective websites. However, there is evidence that some institutions have begun the process of embedding the values that create enabling conditions into their policies and websites. My analysis also allowed additional values to emerge which expands enabling conditions to include a total of eight specific values, adding Education/Training, Transparency, Compassion, and Integrity/Accountability. With these results, I provide a road map that higher education institutions can use to take the next steps in cultivating a culture of care. This roadmap guides schools in actively embedding values that combat bias and take values-based actions that support the faithful application of these values into campus life.