College Sexual Violence in Context: Vulnerable Populations and Campus Climate

Using the 2016 Diverse Learning Environments Survey, this study explores the prevalence of sexual violence among lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and other (LGBQO) and transgender students who experienced unwanted sexual contact or sexual assault while in college, as well as perceptions of campus climate indicators among LGBQO and transgender students. LGBQO and transgender students report higher rates of sexual violence compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Additionally, LGBQO and transgender students who experienced sexual violence had higher measures of constructs that we conceptualize as “practices of resilience”. Greater insight into the prevalence of SV for LGBQO and transgender students, exploration of SV within the context of campus climate, and an anti-deficit approach to understanding minoritized students who have experienced SV in college can inform the efforts of campus professionals, faculty, and Title IX administrators, to better support vulnerable populations in postsecondary institutions. SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN CONTEXT 3 College Sexual Violence in Context: Vulnerable Populations and Campus Climate In recent years, efforts to address campus sexual violence have become top priorities for institutions of higher education (Not Alone Report, 2014). Increased visibility exists in part, due to White House initiatives (Somander, 2014), guidance from the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (Department of Education, 2014), and heightened media scrutiny of colleges and universities, most recently at Stanford University and Baylor University (Samuels & Pollock, 2017; Stack, 2016). While many White House initiatives are being eroded under the current presidential administration, awareness on college campuses is still high. Indeed, research on the prevalence and specific nature of sexual violence in the college context is beginning to be explored in further detail. For example, in 2015, the Association of American Universities (AAU) released a report to understand attitudes and experiences of college students with respect to campus sexual violence. The survey found that 23% of undergraduate women and 5% of undergraduate men reported experiences of sexual violence (Cantor et al., 2015). Another study found that one in five women is sexually assaulted while in college (Krebs, Lindquist, Warner, Fisher, & Martin, 2007). Researchers that focus on campus sexual violence frequently foreground the experiences of women (Harris & Linder, 2017; Tillapaugh, 2017), often resulting in the erasure and invisibility of marginalized groups within the campus sexual violence discourse. Campus sexual violence programs and policies often focus on heterosexual relationships and cisgender students, and cisgender women are often centered as the main focus of campus sexual violence research. Yet, further examination of national sexual violence victimization data indicates an overrepresentation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, questioning, pansexual, asexual, and SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN CONTEXT 4 transgender individuals (Edwards et al., 2015), which we refer to in this study as “vulnerable populations” as a result of their higher rates of victimization and invisibility in research and public awareness. For example, one study found that 46.4% of lesbian women and 74.9% of bisexual women reported sexual violence other than rape during their lifetimes compared to 43.3% of their heterosexual counterparts, and 40.2% of gay and 47.4% of bisexual men reported sexual violence other than rape during their lifetimes compared to 20.8% of heterosexual men (Walters, Chen, & Breiding, 2013). Current research about vulnerable populations with respect to campus sexual violence remains markedly understudied, particularly for lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer (LGBQO), and transgender students (Edwards et al., 2015). For the purposes of this study, we separate sexual orientation and gender identity in our discussion of vulnerable populations. Among LGBQO college students, 43.5% reported dating violence perpetration within the past 12 months (Jones & Raghavan, 2012) and as many as one in four transgender students experience some form of sexual violence in college (Cantor et al., 2015; New, 2015), indicating that rates of campus sexual violence are also higher for LGBQO and transgender students compared to their counterparts. Thus, this study seeks to expand our lens of campus sexual violence discourse and center vulnerable populations that experience dramatically high rates of assault at colleges and universities. While campus sexual violence literature has primarily focused on examining its prevalence as well as psychological effects on individual students, there is much can be gained from understanding the effects that college sexual violence may have on the institution as an organization. Specifically, the current environment of an institution, or climate, might be perceived differently for groups of individuals due to their experiences with sexual violence and SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN CONTEXT 5 their social identities. For this study, we define climate as, “the current attitudes, behaviors, and standards and practices of employees and students of an institution” (Rankin & Reason, 2008, p. 264). The extent to which sexual violence and campus climate are connected is even more of an urgent question for vulnerable populations, as research has shown the important relationship between campus climate and academic and social outcomes for LGBQO and transgender students (Garvey, Sanders, & Flint, 2017). For example, transgender students report experiencing a more negative campus climate compared to cisgender students (Beemyn, 2005; Bilodeau, 2005, 2009; Garvey & Rankin, 2015; Pryor, 2015), and even compared to their cisgender LGBQO counterparts (Dugan, Kusel, & Simounet, 2012). It is likely that experiencing higher rates of campus sexual violence can contribute to experiencing a more negative campus climate, ultimately affecting social and academic outcomes for LGBQO and transgender students at higher levels compared to heterosexual and/or cisgender students. Controlling for sexual orientation, gender identity, race/ethnicity, and year in school, Coulter & Rankin (2017) found an association between greater perceived inclusion of sexual and gender minorities and significantly lower odds of experiencing sexual assault, suggesting that “one possible mechanism for reducing college sexual assault among sexualand gender-minority individuals is increasing inclusion of these vulnerable and marginalized populations” (Coulter & Rankin, 2017, p. 9). While the literature on campus climate for vulnerable populations indicates negative outcomes, the picture for LGBQO and transgender students is not all bleak. Encouragingly, Garvey and Rankin (2015) found that although perceptions of a hostile climate meant transgender students were less likely than their cisgender LGBQO peers to be “out” about being transgender, they were most likely to access campus support resources. Edwards and colleagues (2015) found generally low levels of internalized markers of minority stressors in LGBQO and SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN CONTEXT 6 transgender students who were victims of college sexual violence, suggesting that many LGBTQ college youths display resilience and do not necessarily internalize these negative experiences. Despite battling hegemonic views of gender, transgender college students continue to “practice resilience,” the process by which students actively engage in strategies that allow them to navigate college (Nicolazzo, 2016, p. 88). Similarly, Renn (2007) found that LGBTQ college student leaders engaged in an involvement-identity cycle whereby increased leadership led to a merged gender/sexual orientation and leadership identity. Some of these student leaders developed a “transgenderformational” approach to leadership via their desire to transgenderform structures of power and privilege. Thus, it is possible that LGBQO and transgender students may display their agency despite oppressive systems that allow sexual violence to continue to exist. Students may display signals of agency in the form of attitudes, such as an increased consciousness of critical issues, or as behaviors like increased civic engagement, underscoring the history of organizing and activism for LGBQO and transgender college students (Garvey et al., 2017). Looking at the history of activism, marginalized communities often organized off campus to call attention to the intersection of different aspects of identity (Bevacqua, 2000). Further, students who work for social change based on aspects of their identity may not consider themselves campus activists; rather they consider their engagement a duty or survival strategy that serves their community as a whole as opposed to solely impacting campus climate (Linder & Rodriguez, 2012; Rhoads, 1997). In this study, we expand upon Coulter & Rankin (2017) to provide data on campus sexual violence for LGBQO and transgender college students across the nation. Specifically, we examine differences between students who experienced unwanted sexual contact or sexual assault while in college with respect to gender identity and sexual orientation. Our study is SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN CONTEXT 7 unique in that these groups are analyzed separately since sexual orientation and gender identity are not mutually exclusive. Additionally, we provide a subset analysis of differences between LGBQO and transgender students’ experiences with, and perceptions of, discrimination and bias, which serve as additional indicators of campus climate. Lastly, we looked at levels of critical consciousness, social agency, and civic engagement as proxies for practices of resilience for LGBQO and transgender students who reported experiencing sexual violence. While current studies of college sexual violence aim to inform prevention and response efforts (Cantor et al., 2015), we aim to expand the literature with a