With grаnt mоney frоm the Depаrtment оf Justice, Missoulа launched a cutting-edge bystander-awareness program designed by experts at the University of New Hampshire. It helps students come up with realistic strategies to intervene in sexual assaults before they happen—by trying to distract or stop a potential perpetrator or getting a potential victim (like an intoxicated girl) away from a risky situation. “You can’t go up to that group of frat members and say, ‘Next time you see your buddy taking a drunk girl upstairs, you better say, Stop! No! Real men don’t take drunk girls upstairs!’ ” says Edwards. Using a real example from a group she taught, Edwards tells of a fraternity brother who saw a friend taking a girl upstairs, and then called up and said, “Hey, dude, your car’s getting towed.” After the guy came down to check, he invited him to play beer pong as a distraction. Diversions like spilling a drink on someone or initiating a group activity are among the strategies that are talked about in bystander training. Some Missoula students say they see a positive shift at the university For the most part, the new ideas and accountability—Missoula agreed to an anonymous survey that will assess how measures are working—have been welcomed by school officials and students. So far, campus officials and student leaders are encouraged by the fact that reports of sexual misconduct to the dean of students and the Title IX investigation office have grown, suggesting that women feel they can safely come forward. Some Missoula students say they see a shift in tone at the university too. “Things are slowly starting to change. You still encounter resistance, rape-culture issues. It hasn’t gone away, but the university is taking great steps,” says Jan Roddy, a junior and a coordinator at the student-run Women’s Resource Center. Past the edge of campus, things have not gone as smoothly. Part of the federal investigation scrutinized how city cops and county officials have handled campus assaults. In particular, the county prosecutor has not reacted well to Washington’s feedback about how to do a better job. “It’s beyond belief that we would be accused of this,” said Missoula County attorney Fred Van Valkenburg. Van Valkenburg, a round, bespectacled, pro-choice Obama supporter who employs mostly female attorneys, was referring to the Department of Justice’s contention that his office has a pattern of discriminating against female victims. His response: “No way ... They are all progressive, liberal-thinking people. They are not going to sit by and watch the staff discriminate against women.” Justice investigators based that conclusion on interviews with victims and an analysis showing that from 2008 to 2012, only 16% of sexual-assault cases in Missoula were prosecuted. In the Justice Department’s proposed settlement agreement in December 2013, the agency detailed possible measures that included new staff positions (a sexual-assault investigator and an in-house victim advocate) along with sexual-assault training for Van Valkenburg’s team. Van Valkenburg says the city already has a victim’s-advocate office with over eight employees and that some of his attorneys have already received sexual assault training and will continue to do so. For Van Valkenburg, who will retire at the end of the year after 16 years as the Missoula County attorney, the fight is an emotional one, with his legacy at stake. He says his prosecution rate is not out of step with national averages. He also contends that the Department of Justice relied on erroneous hearsay in its scathing findings letter, which included the comment from one attorney to the mother of a 5-year-old rape victim, “Boys will be boys.” “People in this office don’t think like that,” he says. Van Valkenburg has refused to cooperate with the Justice Department and is suing on the grounds that it doesn’t have the authority to investigate his office. But even friends in town wish he would stop resisting. “I know Fred believes himself to be right, but at some point he’s going to have to choose between being right and moving forward,” says Missoula Mayor John Engen. For their part, the mayor and the chief of police have cooperated with Justice, implementing trauma training for police officers, creating a less intimidating interview room for sexual-assault victims and inviting trained counselors to participate in interviews with victims. All told, the city allocated roughly $350,000 in its 2015 fiscal year budget to cover the changes. Will the kind of steps being taken at Missoula actually make women safer? Few doubt that educating students about the sexual assault threat and empowering them through bystander-awareness programs can help head off some assaults. But some victims and advocates say colleges need to get tougher on the perpetrators. Expulsion could be a powerful deterrent, but schools are still reluctant to expel young men over sexual conduct, say the co-founders of Know Your IX, a grassroots student movement that educates students about Title IX. “When someone who rapes is suspended for a day, it sends the message to the school community that sexual violence and relationship violence just isn’t that big of a deal,” says co-founder Dana Bolger, who says she was raped at Amherst College in 2011. But while zero tolerance may sound good in principle, it can be disconcerting to male students—and their parents— who fear that zealous colleges will side with alleged victims in murky circumstances. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there are schools in the country that don’t expel people when they ought to. I’m also convinced there are schools that expel people when they shouldn’t,” says Matthew Kaiser, a criminal-defense attorney who has represented students accused of sexual assault at colleges and universities. To properly protect accused students, Kaiser says, the standard for sexual assault should match the higher standard of proof applied to most other student violations, the accused should be entitled to representation by a lawyer or advocate and sanctions should reflect varying offenses. A student who sexually assaults a girl who is unconscious, he says, should receive a harsher punishment than one where the situation was ambiguous. For the Obama Administration, the next step is widening the battle beyond Missoula. To kick this off, the White House released a report on April 29 outlining best practices for all schools. It called for some of the same measures undertaken at Montana, such as recommendations for a bystander-awareness program and advice on how to partner with the community and local law enforcement. It emphasized the value of annual campus surveys to hold colleges accountable. The White House hopes to make these mandatory through legislative or executive action, though that is anything but certain. Without federal action, universities are unlikely to conduct the kind of anonymous surveys that would accurately reveal the breadth of their sexual-assault problem. The reason is fear of bad publicity and what it could mean for their college rankings and their bottom line. If some schools conduct surveys and others don’t, the schools that do the right thing may end up looking less safe than their competitors. Mandatory surveys would allow parents to compare accurate data and put all schools on equal footing. Ratcheting up the pressure, the Administration then released its May 1 list of the 55 schools under federal scrutiny for possible Title IX violations. The goal: signal to schools that their reputations will suffer if they fail to address sexual assault. But beyond the public shaming, there isn’t much more the Department of Education can do. Not all the schools listed will be found in violation, and only some will enter into a settlement agreement as Missoula did. Technically, the department can withhold federal funding for Title IX violations. Yet that punishment is seen as so severe, it’s considered unlikely the Administration would mete it out, say members of Congress. The bottom line: the White House’s proposed reforms don’t have teeth without mandatory climate surveys that would supply honest data on campus safety, or an ability to levy fines. Congressional action is needed, and for student activists and victims, those hopes are riding on efforts from Democratic Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut—the same trio that recently worked on bills to address sexual assault in the military and has promised to work on campus assaults. The three Senators and their staffs met recently to brainstorm and came up with more than a dozen ideas for measures to put in a campus-assaults bill. Gillibrand tells Time that standout ideas so far include requiring climate surveys to give everyone, including prospective students and parents, an apples-to-apples comparison of schools and extending the statute of limitations on Title IX complaints beyond the current six months. McCaskill says she is also interested in examining fines, federal grants for prevention efforts and mandating that a trained interviewer meet victims early in the process. Both Gillibrand and McCaskill say they favor tougher sanctions against perpetrators and greater cooperation between colleges and local law enforcement. Whether a majority of their colleagues would agree is far from clear. Back at Missoula, meanwhile, the mood is better. The spring air is throwing the Bitterroot Mountains in sharp relief, and some of the campus angst about the “rape capital” nickname has been supplanted by confidence that the university is on the right path. Graduation is set for May 17 in the school’s beloved Washington Grizzly Stadium. Some 3,600 students will move on, having received degrees and an unexpected crash course on the myths and realities of sexual assault. And this fall, a new class of freshmen will arrive in need of the same education.
In yоur оwn wоrds, explаin the generаl Acаdemic Honesty Policy at FHSU as best as you can, focusing on what "plagiarism" means.Then, please explain in your own words why using generative A.I. for written assignments at FHSU would violate this policy.Students ARE allowed to access FHSU's Academic Honesty Policy online, to assist in answering this question. To do so, please click on the "Assessment Details" tab in the lower-right corner, to access the allowed URL.