Reimagining the Study of Campus Sexual Assault

Women of Color Undergraduate Students’ Experiences with Campus Sexual Assault: An Intersectional Analysis

“…These policies often inform race-evasive practices on campus. For instance, scholars and practitioners have spent time and energy addressing students' alcohol use on campus in an attempt to prevent incapacitated CSA (Harris & Linder, 2017;Harris et al, 2020). Yet, due to "racial cultural patterns" (p. 3660), some Black women at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and non-HBCUs were less likely than white women students to consume alcohol frequently and, thus, often less likely to experience incapacitated assault (Krebs, Barrick, Lindquist, Crosby, Boyd, & Bogan, 2011).…”

“…Others (Ullman & Filipias, 2001) suggest that Women of Color were more likely than white women students to report to the police and formal outlets. These contradictory findings may be influenced by societal and institutional factors that are not often accounted for in quantitative research, which makes up the majority of research on CSA (Harris et al, 2020;Linder et al, 2020). For instance, how might women's decisions to report perpetrators of Color to police be influenced by antiracist activism on campus?…”

“…After reviewing 98 articles that used "intersectionality" to study issues in postsecondary contexts, Harris and Patton (2019) concluded that no scholars mentioned, let alone used, the three forms of intersectionality first defined by Crenshaw (1991) to frame intersectional research. Concurrently, scholars rarely use intersectionality to frame CSA (see Harris et al, 2020), which is a missed opportunity given its roots in Black feminist discourses of sexual and domestic violence. Through this research, I aim to use intersectionality in a manner that reflects Crenshaw's theorizing of the concept, in both content (Women of Color and sexual violence) and form (structural, political, representational).…”

Women of Color Student Survivors’ Perceptions of Campus Sexual Assault Prevention Programming

“…This current study explores Women of Color student survivors’ perceptions of the effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of institutional prevention in an attempt to elucidate a more “productive path” toward the eradication of CSA. This research centers on Women of Color student survivors to challenge and significantly add to the vast majority of CSA research that focuses on white women students’ experiences with CSA prevention (Harris et al, 2020; Harris & Linder, 2017). When studying prevention, scholars often use study samples of majority white women (e.g., Coker et al, 2015; Gidycz et al, 2008), do not ask students to report their racial identities (e.g., Moynihan et al, 2011), or neglect to engage race in a significant manner when reporting research results and findings (Harris et al, 2020).…”

“…This research centers on Women of Color student survivors to challenge and significantly add to the vast majority of CSA research that focuses on white women students’ experiences with CSA prevention (Harris et al, 2020; Harris & Linder, 2017). When studying prevention, scholars often use study samples of majority white women (e.g., Coker et al, 2015; Gidycz et al, 2008), do not ask students to report their racial identities (e.g., Moynihan et al, 2011), or neglect to engage race in a significant manner when reporting research results and findings (Harris et al, 2020). Subsequently, scholars who study CSA often obscure how Women of Color experience CSA at higher rates than white women students (Cantor et al, 2019) and how, due to a history of colonization, slavery, forced removal, cultural genocide, and continued violence against Communities of Color in the U.S., the experiences and prevention needs of Women of Color are often qualitatively different from white women's experiences and needs (Crenshaw, 1991; Harris, 2017; Wooten, 2017).…”