Usually I post to my blog on Monday mornings, but I hope you’ll indulge this early post and keep it in mind as you begin your week.

Sexual assault is a problem on virtually every college campus. Yet it is only very recently that colleges and universities, no doubt pushed by public outcry and increasing stern federal action, have begun to face the need to more fully understand and address this issue.

Within the last year, Augustana substantially revised a host of policies regarding sexual assault. But other than those cases that are reported, we don’t know nearly enough about our students’ perception of, and experiences with, sexual assault on campus.

For the last two weeks we’ve been participating in a survey of campus climate and sexual assault conducted by the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium. This upcoming Friday, March 27th, the data collection phase of our participation in this survey will end. Although we repeatedly invited responses from all students, as of last Thursday we had only received responses from 570 individuals. While that means we’ve heard from almost 25% of our study body (good enough in statistical terms to make some inferences based on the results), we need to hear from as many students as possible. This is in large part because the most useful information is likely to come from those who are most reticent to share their experiences, making the number of total responses all that much more important.

So I am asking – no matter if you interact with students as their instructor, their mentor, their work supervisor, or even their friend – that you encourage your students to complete this survey. Please remind them that participation in this survey is a prerequisite for improvement. In other words, we can’t improve what we do as a college if we don’t know what our students experience.

I know you have plenty of things on your mind as you prepare for this week. But your comments, even if they are brief, will demonstrate the degree to which Augustana is serious about facing this issue and eradicating sexual assault from our campus. I know that eliminating sexual assault might seem like a rather high bar; I just don’t know how we could aim for anything less.

So please mention this survey to your students. They all received an email on Sunday evening inviting those students who had not participated one last time to respond. Their unique link to the survey was in that email. They can complete it any time this week, but after Friday the survey will no longer be accepting new data.

Thank you for your help.

Make it a good day,

Mark