ABSTRACT
Sexual violence continues to change the lives of millions of college students, and to significantly alter the safety of their campus environments (Cantor, Fisher, Chibnall, & Townsend, 2015; Harris & Linder, 2017). Due to deeply entrenched societal norms around gender, relationships, sexuality, and dominance on college campuses, it has proven to be fairly intractable despite more than 30 years of organized activism and prevention efforts. The author explores the early history of collective awareness about campus sexual violence, the causes and conditions that underlie its occurrence, and examines the federal government’s varied historical responses to it. The author considers the ways that leaders in senior management and student affairs, because they are charged with creating change on campus, have attempted to address, prevent, and respond to sexual violence. The author asserts that centering survivor voices is imperative to understanding the significant impact sexual violence has on student lives and futures. Future strategies to end sexual violence, focusing on enlisting all who hold leadership roles in higher education to better understand and commit to ending this complex problem, are described.
