Sexual Assault prevention should be taken seriously

Staff Writer

Victims of sexual assault never assumed it would happen to them, or that their situation would become a reality. That is not an excuse to not take seriously such a life-changing topic but unfortunately, for some students, this is not taken seriously.

Due to the new sexual assault policies implemented to all SUNY schools this year, student leaders, which include the officers in the Student Senate, as well as all student athletes, must go through a sexual violence education training before starting their activities. Powerpoint presentations are shown to students in College Forum, and the video shown at the training is shown to all students during Hudson Valley’s orientation.

Student athlete Lara Dzembo had to attend the training to play with Hudson Valley’s golf team. “People were on their phones, not paying attention,” she said.

The sexual violence education training is a mixture of two different power point presentations. One is focused on public safety, and the other eleven slide powerpoint just focus on sexual assault. With studies showing that 23 percent of women report sexual assault in college, it becomes alarming that a problem as severe as this still may not be taken seriously by the students attending the training.

“We realize it’s impossible to get every person on campus to do it, but we try to get as many as we can,” said Fred Aliberti, director of Public Safety. With this being a more common occurrence on colleges with on-site housing, that is no reason to overlook the dangers of sexual assault, especially when Hudson Valley plans on having housing in 2017.

The first powerpoint focuses mainly on the safety of the college, going into detail about parking, emergency situations.

Although the campus has 284 cameras on campus as of last spring, memory on the security cameras only lasts for about a week and a half, which is why Aliberti stresses that if you see something happen, you must report it immediately.

“We are fortunate that this isn’t a major problem for us,” said Dennis Kennedy, director of communications and marketing. There has never been a reported case of rape or sexual assault on the campus, but that doesn’t mean they have not occurred and been left unreported. Fifty percent of victims end up not reporting their sexual assault, due to thinking they weren’t “serious enough.”

Get educated, protect yourself, and understand, this is “serious enough.”