Central Michigan Life

Sexual Assault Peer Advocates have fielded 60 official complaints of sexual assault since the school year began.

“Those numbers will go up,” said SAPA adviser Stephen Thompson. “They’re going to go off the charts.”

The number of sexual assaults is very high in the first three months of school and the major targets are freshman females, Thompson said.

SAPA made 216 official contacts with students who were sexually assaulted last year.

Of these contacts, 98 of them were sexual assaults that happened on campus or in Mount Pleasant, said SAPA adviser Stephen Thompson.

In the 2003-04 academic year, SAPA made 250 official contacts. Although this is a higher number than the next year, Thompson expects an increase this year as more students learn about the group.

“They are completely confidential,” said Thompson, a physical education and sport associate professor and Sexual Assault Services coordinator. “How many go to the police? I don’t know.”

In 2004, the Mount Pleasant Police Department investigated 33 criminal sexual contacts, said Public Information Officer Michael Covarrubias.

MPPD investigated 18 complaints from January 2005 to Sept. 9.

“We are striving to educate the community on the dangers of date rape and other violent crime,” Covarrubias said.

However, only three reported criminal sexual assaults were reported to the Central Michigan University Police Department last year, according to the 2004 crime statistics. Two of those forcible sex offenses occurred in university residence halls and the other off-campus.

Thompson said the problem with rape is that people always question the rape victim. They asked questions like “what were you wearing?” and “why did you go to his house?”

“That is the problem with our culture,” Thompson said.

He also said 21 young women are sexually assaulted on a campus this size every week.

“If you get 10 women together, you’re going to be hard pressed not to find that six to eight of them say this has happened to them,” Thompson said.

Crime statistics show 71 percent fewer cases of forcible sex offenses were reported to the CMU Police Department last year in comparison to 2003. There were only seven forcible sex offenses reported in 2003.

Covarrubias said the police support the educational efforts of Thompson and SAPA.

“The students do an outstanding job and show they really care for each other,” Covarrubias said.

Thompson said SAPA does “give a damn” and is doing everything they can to educate people about sexual assault and how it can be stopped. SAPA has sponsored more than 35 programs on campus, including “No Zebras, No Excuses,” and has educates Residence Life and athletics staff and students annual.

“We are the national model for universities,” Thompson said. “The educational component is there.”

Thompson said more students are speaking out against sexual assaults and are not being bystanders to these acts of aggression.

“We didn’t hear that four years ago, but we’re hearing it now,” he said.

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