CW: This article references sexual assault. Please refer to the end of the article for on- and off-campus resources. 

A sexual assault survivor advocacy group expanded a site that compiles statistics on sexual and interpersonal violence from over 750 colleges and universities across the United States and Puerto Rico on Jan. 25.

Data on the site, titled the Campus Accountability Map & Tool (CAMT), is pulled from on-campus, off-campus, public property and local police reports from 2018 to 2020. The tool includes data from 17 colleges in Washington, D.C., including Georgetown University. 

Created by End Rape on Campus, an organization working to end campus sexual violence, the app focuses specifically on collecting data covering underrepresented communities, including data from historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges and universities, according to a Jan. 25 report from the organization.

“End Rape On Campus’ Centering the Margins framework focuses on and centers historically underserved and marginalized student survivors in the campus anti-rape movement and attends to the particular needs of those survivors,” the report said. 

Lily Howard (CAS ’23), a clinic volunteer coordinator for reproductive justice organization H*yas for Choice (HFC), said the website could provide helpful insight into the rates of sexual violence being perpetrated nationwide on college campuses.

Howard said identity plays an important role in contextualizing conversations and information surrounding sexual assault.

“I think a major theme to unpack is identity and how it affects sexual safety and power-based dynamics,” Howard wrote to The Hoya. “The intersection of one’s identities create a unique vulnerability to sexual violence. People from underrepresented communities are more likely to be at risk of sexual violence because of their unique circumstances of oppression.”

The site allows users to compare rates of perpetration of various forms of sexual violence, including rape, domestic violence and stalking, across universities. It also simplifies university policy on sexual misconduct and provides users with various resources on sexual misconduct, including information on Title IX, supporting survivors and one’s legal rights as a survivor. 

Of the schools in the CAMT, 36% reported zero rapes, 37% reported zero incidents of domestic violence and 35% reported zero incidents of stalking between 2018 and 2020. Various factors may influence lower rates of violence that appear on the site — violation of required reports of data as mandated by the Clery Act, investigations that have yet to be concluded or student discomfort with disclosing incidents of violence. 

“I think the app gives a good holistic view of sexual violence on US campuses,” Howard wrote. “It recognizes that instances of power-based violence often go unreported and so the data collected is probably underrepresentative of the actual number.”

CAMT data shows that 34 rapes, five instances of domestic violence and 56 incidents of stalking occurred on Georgetown’s campus from 2018 to 2020. Compared to the neighboring American University (AU) and George Washington University (GWU), Georgetown experienced more incidents of stalking but fewer incidents of rape and domestic violence. 

All three schools, as well as Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law, are currently under investigation for Title IX violations, according to the CAMT. 

Amid this continued violence, students at D.C. universities, including AU, GWU and Georgetown, have protested the responses of their school administrations to high rates of sexual violence.

In November 2022, 1,000 AU students signed a list of demands related to survivor protections that was sent to university administration. In February 2020 at Georgetown, the Black Survivors Coalition, a group dedicated to empowering sexual assault survivors, Black women and nonbinary people in particular, voiced their frustrations through protest.

Howard said the app bolsters the work of HFC and other student advocacy groups on campus.

“HFC has always strived to provide Hoyas with educational tools and guidance on issues like sexual assault and sexual health,” Howard wrote. “This app is a great supplement to our ongoing work to generate awareness of these issues and also a great example of why organizations like H*yas for Choice and many others are so integral to the wellbeing of college students.”

Howard said she hopes there will be more opportunities for both education and accountability around sexual assault in the near future.

“I hope we start shifting our language to power-based violence to better capture the wide array of harms caused by situations in which one actor or actors holds power over the other through a variety of factors (wealth, status, race, etc.),” Howard wrote. “I hope to see Georgetown work harder in the coming years to incorporate bystander training into its core curriculum and create a more survivor-centered process for incident reporting.”

On-campus resources include Health Education Services (202-687-8949) and Counseling and Psychiatric Service (202-687-6985)); additional off-campus resources include the D.C. Rape Crisis Center (202-333-7273) and the D.C. Forensic Nurse Examiner Washington Hospital Center (844-443-5732). [If about clerical assault: Individuals can also report sexual misconduct by a Jesuit by contacting the province’s victim advocate at [email protected].] If you or anyone you know would like to receive a sexual assault forensic examination or other medical care — including emergency contraception — call the Network for Victim Recovery of D.C. (202-742-1727). To report sexual misconduct, you can contact Georgetown’s Title IX coordinator (202-687-9183) or file an online report here. Emergency contraception is available at the CVS located at 1403 Wisconsin Ave NW and through H*yas for Choice. For more information, visit sexualassault.georgetown.edu.