HANOVER — Nearly 20 years ago, at an anniversary event marking Dartmouth College’s decision to go coed, several female students shared their stories of sexual assault and feeling silenced.
But it was the response from a trustee that stuck out most to alumna Martha Hennessey.
“She stood up and said, ‘Why are we all being Debbie Downers and whiners?’ ” Hennessey, 65, recalled.
The question was shocking in itself, but for Hennessey, now a Democratic state senator from Hanover who has spoken out about being physically assaulted during her time as a Dartmouth student, it represented a much more pervasive problem within the Dartmouth community. It’s a problem that dates back to her time as one of the first women accepted into the college in 1972, and one she worries could still exist today.
“It’s still a very unpopular place to say that you’re unhappy, to say that you feel unsafe (on campus),” Hennessey said, noting the conversations she’s had with more recent graduates in the past 10 years. “That kind of environment isn’t conducive to progress.”
The on-campus environment, and the general support that students are given with regard to sexual assault cases, has come to the forefront of national and local discussions in recent years due to an investigation and class-action lawsuit at Dartmouth. The suit, filed by nine current and former students, alleges that the school ignored sexual misconduct by three professors in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. The plaintiffs and the college reached a proposed $14 million settlement in August, and are now awaiting a federal judge’s approval. The three professors also have either retired or resigned after college officials recommended that their tenure be revoked and that they be terminated.
Now an annual report released by Dartmouth this month, which shows that sexual assault reports rose 41% in 2018, is raising new questions about a changing campus culture and whether students feel more comfortable coming forward.
For some, the answer is an unequivocal yes.
“There’s a larger culture here of people speaking up,” Dartmouth College freshman Annie Politi said. Like her classmates, Politi has taken mandatory sexual assault awareness training through a new program the college started last year called the Sexual Violence Prevention Project. And Politi believes the project reflects a changing campus.
The program was announced in 2015, three years before the class-action lawsuit was filed in November 2018. The program aims to reduce sexual assault and harassment on campus by helping students identify abusive relationships, teaching them how to support each other following assault or abuse, and giving them access to school resources so they can report incidents.
The college launched the mandatory seminars last year, and focused much of their efforts on reporting, Childress said.
“The Title IX office is taking a larger role than what I expected,” Politi said. Title IX is a federal law that protects people from gender-based discrimination at federally funded institutions. Dartmouth has a Title IX coordinator who ensures the college is upholding the law, and investigates incidents of gender-based harassment and sexual assault.
Politi said that she’s discussed campus attitudes toward sexual assault with her friends at other colleges and universities and found Dartmouth to be progressive. “There are upperclassmen who, when you go to a party, say, ‘This is what to look out for,’ and say, ‘We’ll look out for you,’ ” Politi said.
“We’d heard about (the lawsuit) — the school has a reputation,” freshman Michelle Son said about her worries before enrolling at Dartmouth. “Before coming, it was a concern.”
But since she arrived on campus in late summer, Son said some of her concerns have been quelled, thanks in part to the sexual violence prevention program.
“I appreciate the work they’re doing now. … I think if something were to happen, there are good resources for students,” Son said.
Others, like senior Juan Miche-Rosales, agree that the climate surrounding sexual assault on campus is changing, but he attributes that change to initiatives from the students, rather than the administration.
“I don’t believe the college is reaching out to us,” Miche-Rosales said, adding that he and his classmates predate the prevention program’s mandatory lectures, which started for incoming freshmen in fall 2018. “There are more support groups being made, but that’s been more on the students’ part.”
For Amanda Childress, the associate director of Dartmouth’s Student Wellness Center and lead developer of the sexual violence prevention program, the uptick in reports of sexual assault last year is indicative of a positive change.
College officials have asserted that the increase in reports does not necessarily mean that there have been more rapes and other sex crimes on campus, but that students are more comfortable reporting such incidents.
“We want to see an increase of reports from students who experience harm,” Childress said. “We want to know that they’re getting the care, support and resources that they need.”
In addition to the campus report, Childress said she’s also seen firsthand evidence of a changing climate on a campus where much of the social life has revolved around fraternities.
Childress said more students are intervening to prevent sexual assault and harassment than before, including more members of sororities and fraternities.
“Students are asking, ‘How do I talk to my friend about what they’re engaging in?’ There are a lot of young men approaching us to ask how they handle these situations,” she said.
The response from students — especially male students — is new, Childress said: “This wasn’t happening four years ago.”
Dartmouth lecturer Giavanna Munafo, who is currently teaching a class in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department on sexual assault and the #MeToo movement, said she’s also seen the cultural shift from her own students.
Over the past two weeks, Munafo has invited Childress, a representative from WISE — the Upper Valley organization that aims to end gender-based violence — and two of the plaintiffs from the lawsuit to speak to her class. During discussions, the group brought up the report and the idea that attitudes about openness in sexual assault cases might be changing.
“Upper-class students were talking about how even in their three to four years, they’ve seen a sharp uptick in bystander intervention,” Munafo said. “Generally speaking, (the students) feel that there is a cultural shift.”
Though the origin of shift is hard to pinpoint, Munafo said student-led initiatives and the efforts from the school both have played a part.
“We need both things. I don’t think one necessarily conflicts with the other,” she said.
A national conversation following the #MeToo movement has also contributed to the shift, she said.
“Generation after generation after generation of people are saying, ‘Time’s up,’ ” Munafo said.
But even as the community becomes more progressive, some, like Hennessey, say more change needs to happen.
“I can’t even talk with my own classmates about it,” Hennessey said, recalling her feelings of being silenced after she was assaulted in the early 1970s. “As alumnae, they don’t want to hear it.”
The problem, she said, goes beyond raising awareness of sexual assault on campus.
“There have been lots of people trying to change the social system. I think the social life of Dartmouth students is broken,” said Hennessey, whose late father was dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth decades ago. She pointed specifically to the culture of fraternities and sororities on campus, which she said helps uphold a power differential between men’s and women’s social spaces. “At the very least, they should all be coed.”
Childress said power dynamics are part of what the sexual violence prevention program aims to address. Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon also instituted a ban on hard alcohol in 2015, decreasing its visibility on campus.
But recently, Childress said the school is trying to refocus the discussion. Rather than just blaming alcohol and partying for sexual assault, they want to examine the root causes of gender-based violence.
“Now there’s more of a conversation around power dynamics and how abuses of power play a role in sexual violence,” she said.
The school is still in the early phases of change, and the curriculum for the sexual violence prevention program is still in development, so Childress recognizes there’s a way to go, and that some students who have been harmed by sexual misconduct might still be discouraged from reporting it.
“The students don’t want their Dartmouth experience to be fully connected with sexual violence,” Childress said.
But, she added, the attitude of the community as a whole is evolving: “There’s a huge shift in how students are talking about (assault), but also how they’re behaving.”
Anna Merriman can be reached at annalouisemerriman@gmail.com.