The 97% Project

One in five women will be raped during their college career and one in sixteen men will be raped during their college career.
In the context of Penn State University, this means of the 40,639 undergraduate students approximately 8,127 women and 2,540 men will be raped during their time at Penn State. 

In 2018, 71 rapes were reported to Pennsylvania Unified Crime Reporting System for Centre County, the county that houses Penn State. In that same year 69 rape cases were reported to the University Park Police. This means that 97% of rape cases in the entirety of Centre County were associated with Penn State University. A single rape case is unacceptable, 10 cases is unacceptable, but 69 cases is abhorrent. These 69 rape cases occurred in an area of a mere 12 square miles as compared to Centre County’s 1,113 square miles. This means that 1% of an entire county’s given area is responsible for 97% of its rape cases.

It is the responsibility of Penn State University to address its rampant rape and work to reduce it. It is not the duty of students to avoid rape, it is the duty of the university to preemptively address potential perpetrators and to establish strict justice when rapes are committed. In order to fulfill this two key initial steps must be taken. 

1. “Timely Warnings” must be issued for all sexual misconduct reports.
2. Proper channels for reporting cases must be made clear to all students (i.e., it must be made common knowledge that the Office of Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Response has no legal jurisdiction only the ability to issue academic sanctions)

In following the above procedures Penn State will small yet significant steps in the right direction in addressing rape on its campus.