By: Jade Rayner News Editor
Sexual Assault Awareness Month is here and, while it’s important year-round to know the resources available to survivors of sexual assault, April is dedicated to raising awareness of this issue.
According to http://www.nsvrc.org, one in five women and one in 16 men will be a victim of completed or attempted sexual assault while in college, yet more than 90 percent of sexual assault victims on college campuses do not report it. Additionally, 40 percent of colleges and universities reported not investigating a single sexual assault in the past five years.
Reach Out is a free application that is aiming to prevent campus sexual assault or provide resources for survivors of it. The application is available to download on Apple and Android devices. Currently there are 2,500 schools listed in the Reach Out database, each of which has their own customized resources available to users.
The creation of Reach Out was “somewhat unexpected” according to www.capptivation.com.
“During the summer of 2014, after graduating college, three of my friends from high school – Jack Zandi, Racquel Giner, and Zach Csillag – and myself often found ourselves hanging out at my house, talking about our post-grad plans,” explained Billy Sadik-Khan, a partner of Capptivation and one of Reach Out’s data maintenance team members. “Right around that time, the issue of sexual misconduct on college campuses was garnering more attention from the media and lawmakers … and so it started coming up in our conversations.”
Sadik Khan went on to say, “We discussed things like our experiences with sexual misconduct at our own colleges; if we had known anybody, what exactly the right thing to do is if someone tells you they’ve been assaulted; what resources are available to you, etc. We all came up with different answers, realized that we couldn’t possibly be the only people looking for this information. We identified a need for students to have all this crucial, hard-to-find, often difficult to understand information in an easy, intuitive and accessible format. What better way to provide this information than directly on someone’s smartphone?”
When searching Western Oregon University on the Reach Out application, users can find local safe places and emergency contacts, including the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, West Valley Hospital and the Monmouth Police Department. Sexual assault reporting options, information on Title IX and a guide on what you can do if have been a victim of sexual assault or know someone who has, can also be found on Reach Out.
Schools also have the ability to manage the customized information if they choose to through an online console on www.capptivation.com.
“We believe that the cost of college tuition for a young student should not implicitly include, on top of room and board and a meal plan, a significant chance of being sexually assaulted” stated Sadik-Khan.
For more information about Reach Out and ways to get involved, visit www.capptivation.com. The application can be downloaded for free on both the App Store and Play Store.
Contact the author at journalnews@wou.edu
