New Survey Shows More Than a Quarter of Undergraduate Women Students Have Been Victims of Sexual Misconduct

The Association of American Universities has released a new report on sexual assault and sexual misconduct on college campuses. A total of 181,752 students from 33 colleges and universities completed a survey.

The overall rate of non-consensual sexual contact by physical force or inability to consent since a respondent enrolled as a student at their school was 13 percent. For undergraduate women students the rate was 26 percent. For graduate women, 10.8 percent were victims or sexual assault or misconduct. For both undergraduate and graduate women, the rates increased from an earlier AAU survey conducted in 2015.

Mary Sue Coleman, president of the Association of American Universities, noted that “the results provide cause for both hope and continued concern. They reveal that, while students know more about university-sponsored resources for victims of sexual assault and misconduct, they still aren’t using these resources often enough. The results also show that rates of sexual assault and misconduct, measured by self-reports from students, have increased slightly since 2015, and that some groups of students – including women, non-cisgender students, and others – continue to be victimized at disproportionately high rates.”

The full 433-page report, 2019 AAU Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Misconduct, may be downloaded here.