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The prevalence of sexual violence on college campuses and the prevalence of what Peggy Reeves Sanday calls "rape-prone culture" have been hot-button issues for young women activists since the late 1980s and early 1990s, when a constellation of events brought the subject to the forefront of the public consciousness. In 1987, Mary Koss published her landmark study indicating that roughly one in four college-aged women had experienced attempted or completed rape since the age of 14. In 1991, four women at Brown University scrawled the names of their rapists on a bathroom wall, and hundreds of other women joined in. The four originators of Brown's now-infamous "Rape List," garnered significant media attention, and towards the end of that year, Brown officially adopted a sexual misconduct policy, which made sexual assault punishable under the university's disciplinary code. Universities across the country followed suit, and schools made strides in developing policies to consider sexual assault differently from other disciplinary violations. At the same time, student activist groups used this climate of concern to build momentum for events like Take Back the Night, for sexual assault peer education programs, and for truly responsible sexual assault policies.
Almost 15 years later, we are at a new crisis point in sexual assault issues on college campuses. Although the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (see timeline) was passed in its original form in 1990, major concerns about compliance with the act's provisions regarding confidentiality policies and public disclosures have arisen on campuses across the country. In March of 2003,...