Sexual Assaults and rapes at Rice University

Colleges and Universities A-Z Rice University
1

I do not know why the original threads were removed.

Bright students interested in Rice University need to know about this.

I myself had Rice as one of the schools I would be highly interested in going.

However, the following article from their own student newspaper has put me off considerably:

https://www.ricethresher.org/article/2019/10/in-their-own-words

If you read some of the student accounts, they are horrifying. So many rapes and sexual assaults have taken place in just couple of years. The victims are crying out for help and support.

Shouldn’t the University call in the Houston police to take action? How is the university admin allowing this to take place at the campus which is a small one?

Can current Rice students share a light on this article.

I will try to share this further and tell those who I know to refrain from applying there if this is what the situation is at Rice.

2

Because you spammed them over multiple forums - none of them the correct one. I’ve moved this iteration into the correct forum

3

If this is a major concern for you, I would highly recommend you research rape/assault statistics at all campuses where you are applying. Sadly, this is a problem everywhere. For instance in a 2017 survey 15% of UT Austin female students reported being raped and 28% reported being sexually assaulted. I do not believe Austin is unique in having these sort of numbers. However, the stats at many schools might be difficult to find if an official police report is not made, unless some sort of mass survey had been done and made public.

If you have followed the situation at Rice you know that this started from an opinion piece in the paper from a victim who was upset that the person who assaulted her was allowed to graduate after being suspended. I believe he found a loophole since he had enough credits to graduate before his suspension went into effect. The newspaper then asked students and alums who had been assulted to share their stories which then resulted in the article you referenced. Rice’s President and the Dean of Students have both responded to the concerns that have been raised and say they are looking at how to better handle these situations in the future. I guess we’ll see how that plays out.

As a parent of a Rice student I have been following these articles closely these last couple of weeks and speaking with my daughter about this topic. As i’ve said, I don’t think these issues are unique to Rice and any student going to college needs to be aware of issues surrounding consent and how to keep themselves and others safe. The freshman students at Rice just finished a mandatory 5 week “Critical Thinking in Sexuality” class where a lot of topics related to these issues were covered. I don’t feel my child is unsafe at Rice and there are many things about the community there that makes me feel more comfortable about her safety there than I would be a at other schools. However, I would be naive to believe these things do not happen.

I would recommend you visit any school that you are seriously interested in and if you have the opportunity ask the students about issues such as these.

4

When students report a sexual assault to SJP, they have the option to go through the criminal justice system. Many don’t–it’s an exhausting, frustrating, traumatizing process, and many cases don’t end with punishments for the perpetrators.

5

Always good to raise awareness, but this is not a problem unique to Rice University.

In my opinion, excess consumption of alcohol also needs to be addressed as part of the problem.

6

I have a freshman daughter at Rice, so this issue is a big deal to us. I do not think that this issue is unique to Rice. However, I do appreciate that this issue is in the open, and actively being covered by the school paper. Rice is confronting the issue.

7

Perhaps the most surprising part of this is that Rice students try to hold themselves to a high standard, so you would almost be led to believe that such acts, which are regarded as overwhelmingly despicable, should not be occurring on campus. However, the article shows that not only does sexual assault occur, but some of the situations described in the article are clearly malicious. I think the mentality that Rice is different than other universities may impact how members of the student body behave and act. For example, from a victim’s perspective, you think you’re in a safe environment and that nobody at Rice would violate you, so you let your guard down. From a perpetrator’s perspective, you believe that you are not capable of committing such acts because you earned admission from a good school, so you justify that your actions are always within reason. Thus, people may forget to behave in a vacuum.

It’s also greatly discouraging to hear that the support system is so lacking currently. Rice tries extremely hard to depict itself as a safe campus, but you can’t prevent people from making bad decisions. Additionally, if the people of authority here - the people you’re supposed to be able to trust the most - are unwilling or unable to help, then how can you tout the safety of the campus? In some ways, it’s as if Rice wants its students to believe that the occurrence of sexual assault on this particular campus is a myth. I think Rice has to present the reality that no matter how good Rice students may be, sexual assault does happen on campus, and that it is not always a violent act, but that seemingly small, subtle behaviors can still cause discomfort and be seen as sexual assault. Such behaviors can be caused by a brief moment of poor decision and not just by a mentality or personality that took years to develop. Therefore, such behaviors can occur at any place, even at an institution as reputable as Rice.

On the bright side, it does appear that Rice will act in response to the Thresher article, including the possibility of revising policies. One has to hope such that actions are performed to genuinely protect victims, and not just to protect Rice’s image in light of the backlash.
https://ricethresher.atavist.com/pay-attention-thresher-opinion-prompts-apology?fbclid=IwAR1ldZEqMAl2hUAbfNHkoaIFcgjPGxOf4v8FDN0nxnYBKrOTRfSLG9BLehY

In the end, it’s true that these issues are not exclusive to Rice, but that shouldn’t extenuate the circumstances. The unfortunate reality is that, no institution, no top 25 private, no top 50 public, no community college, and so forth, is immune to these problems, nor should we pretend that they are. We have to protect ourselves and others with that in mind.

8

Make no mistake, Rice is taking this very seriously. As a parent of a current soph, we are on top of the communication about this with our student. She is very grateful for the admins taking this so seriously. Even to the point of being with one of the members of SJP who sent Dean Gorman a message and immediately got a response back that she had cleared her schedule to have discussions. There aren’t many universities that react so strongly to an opinion piece in their campus newspaper. So grateful my daughter attends a university that listens to its students! Like many have stated before, this is not unique to Rice, the difference is Rice students know they have a voice and are using it.