RICHMOND — New figures for reports of student sexual misconduct at Indiana University were revealed to the public in a presentation at the IU Board of Trustees Student Relations Committee meeting Thursday at IU-East.
On the Bloomington campus, numbers for the 2015-16 school year were similar to the 2014-15 school year in most categories.
Overall, there were 237 reports of student sexual misconduct, down 15 from the previous school year. Generally, increases are seen as a good thing because research shows the vast majority of sexual misconduct goes unreported, said Emily Springston, IU’s Title IX coordinator. But she doesn’t see this particular decrease as a bad thing.
Reports of student sexual misconduct had been increasing on the Bloomington campus for some time. There were only 46 total reports made during the 2011-12 school year. That number went up to 94 the next school year and increased to a total of 114 for the 2013-14 school year.
The 252 reports made during the 2014-15 school year were made at a time when several efforts to increase awareness of sexual misconduct procedures converged, Springston said. Now that programs such as Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault are in place, Springston said, she’s not concerned about the decrease.
“I would not read too much into the number moving down,” she said. “It’s not going down by a significant amount.”
Each report was classified into one of the following five categories: sexual assault/contact, dating/domestic violence, stalking, exploitation and sexual harassment. Exploitation did not get its own category in the 2014-15 report. “We’ve seen a rise in sexual exploitation,” Springston said, explaining the creation of the new category.