UNC reacts to Donald Trump’s leaked comments and alleged sexual assault

Vick said he doesn’t agree with the justification that the comments were just “locker room talk.”

“When I hear things like that, it’s not locker room talk. What he was saying was geared a lot more towards sexual assault than it was towards harmless, guy joking,” he said.

Vick encouraged survivors at UNC and everywhere to speak up and speak out about sexual assault.

“It’s a disgrace that so many women have had to go through this, and so many men have had to go through it as well. But one way to fight it is for more victims to speak up, and I think that might be the best way to fight it,” he said.

Joshua Asiko, a UNC-CH senior majoring in psychology, said such talk is not a healthy way to regard women or sexual encounters.

“I guess what he’s trying to say is that boys will be boys, but that’s just not enough of a defense. Who you are there is who you are all the time. So if he’s using that as a justification, I don’t think that holds up at all,” he said.

Asiko said any culture that allows this kind of language perpetuates the unsafety of women.

UNC-CH has faced loud criticism over how it handles sexual assault for the past few years. In 2012, Landen Gambill went public with allegations that her ex-boyfriend sexually abused her and that the university treated her unfairly throughout the investigation of her claims.

Gambill and four other women, including a former administrator, filed a Title IX complaint against the university in January 2013. In the complaint, they said the university pressured the former administrator to underreport the number of sexual assaults to the federal government.

UNC-CH was one of the initial 55 colleges under investigation by the Department of Education for Title IX violations in May 2014.

Since that time, the university created a new policy on discrimination, harassment and related misconduct. UNC-CH has also created a task force designed to create a strategic plan for the creation of a prevention culture on campus.

Christi Hurt, assistant vice chancellor of student affairs, said in a conference Wednesday that Title IX is not the answer to questions about the University’s response and prevention of interpersonal violence, but it provides college campuses with a lens to work through to solve this problem.

“Opening doors doesn’t matter if people don’t feel safe while they’re here,” Hurt said in the conference. “And that’s where we are now. We’re talking about how to make sure people are safe when they are here so they can be full students and experience everything like other students while they are here at UNC.”

Hurt said Title IX is a powerful tool given to college campuses by the federal government because it requires universities to end,  address and prevent recurrence of  issues such as interpersonal violence.

While the university has made great strides with Title IX, Hurt said the university has more work to do.

“Sexual violence is a problem that all of our communities need to grapple with, we are no different. But we can do better.”

Yet the criticism continues.

In a September press conference, UNC-CH sophomore Delaney Robinson stated in a press conference she survived an alleged sexual assault at an on-campus apartment complex in February 2016.

She said she cooperated with law enforcement by allowing a rape kit to be taken and by giving a statement. However she said, the university and the Title IX office have done nothing six months after her assault.

“I did not realize that rather than receiving support and concern from the University, I would only be further victimized by the people who should be working to keep us safe,” Robinson said in a release.

The accusations made national news and sparked outrage and intense debate. UNC-CH senior Hannah Petersen, a double-major in journalism and anthropology, said Robinson’s account could have a silencing effect on students who have been raped. She said Robinson followed the correct procedures and had more evidence than many sexual assault survivors. Petersen said she had less evidence after her own sexual assault than Robinson did.

“Watching [Robinson’s] case not get pushed forward was just kind of like a slap, saying, ‘you know what, cases like yours don't matter either,’ if she can't get the same results,” she said.

Most rigorous research has concluded that less than 10 percent of rape reports to law enforcement are false, according to the National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women.

Senior Julia Whitfield said Robinson’s statement should be used to address the concept of consent.

“Because we all understand consent when it means going to the doctor and the doctor's like, 'Read this. I'm going to do this procedure on you,' she said. “And we get that, but we don't see how that can translate when it comes to sexual assault.”

Whitfield also said students should be taught to drink responsibly and in moderation.

UNC-CH senior and psychology major Hannah Beason, who said Trump’s comments left her speechless, responded by enlisting friends to help her tie Carolina Blue ribbons into loops representing solidarity against sexual assault.

“Every single time we crossed the ribbon, that ribbon could represent one girl that has suffered a sexual assault,” she said.

UNC-CH senior John Aceti, a journalism major, said awareness of rape culture is important. He said if someone knows what perpetuates rape culture or promotes a negative image of women, they can point that out to other people.

Aceti said sometimes people like to brag, and there can be a joking aspect to it, but Trump’s comments aren’t a joke.

“It doesn't make a lot of sense to me for it to be 'locker room talk,' because that's pretty explicit stuff that you don't expect to be heard or said anywhere,” Aceti said.

Other students said Robinson’s account of the university’s response furthers an idea that athletes have a different set of standards.

“There is this idea of rape culture among, especially, college football players, and so there's this idea that athletes have a different sort of set of standards than most people do,” said UNC-CH senior Caleb Waters, a journalism major.

For Emily Crockett, a senior information science and art history major, enough is enough.

“This is no longer about politics,” she said. “[Trump] is advocating for something that has affected my life and so many people that I know. It shouldn’t be tolerated anymore.”

Jada Harkins Andrews, a  junior at UNC-CH double-majoring in journalism and political science, said men generally don’t make comments like Trump’s and that such talk encourages the objectification of women.

“People try to defend these kind of things as common talk and we should excuse it,” she said. “But this is very much the kind of behavior that encourages that it’s okay to speak that way about women as objects.”