Many colleges in Iowa are seeing fluctuating numbers of reports in instances of sexual assault on their campuses, a spring 2018 IowaWatch/Simpson College journalism project showed.
However, officials interviewed at Iowa colleges and universities said they have no way to track what drives the statistics. That means colleges and universities in Iowa struggle to measure how effective these initiatives are on their campuses, despite faculty and staff efforts to educate students about sexual assault prevention and reporting.
This podcast explores the problem, and what college officials a team of graduating journalism students at Simpson interviewed for IowaWatch said needs to be done about it.
About This Report
This story is the result of an IowaWatch/Simpson College journalism seminar collaboration featuring reporting by:
Temesha Derby, 20, from Grinnell, Iowa, who graduated with a major in multimedia journalism and minors in sociology and English.
Britteny Johnson, 21, from Crescent, Iowa, who graduated with a double major in multimedia communication and theatre arts.
Laura Wiersema, 21, from Fulton, Illinois, who graduated with a major in multimedia journalism and a minor in art.
The journalists started work on this project in January 2018 with Lyle Muller of IowaWatch and Mark Siebert, Simpson assistant professor of multimedia communication. Jeff Stein is the producer and host of the IowaWatch Connection radio program.