About 10 percent of female University of Oregon students have been raped according to survey

 

A survey carried out in the University of Oregon showed that 10 percent of the female students surveyed have been raped while attending the school.

According to university researchers, 35 percent of students - and 14 percent of men - had at least one forcible sexual encounter and about 90 percent of students assaulted kept quiet about the violence.

The White House has declared sex crimes to be "epidemic" on U.S. college campuses, with one in five students falling victim to sex assault while still attending school.

The U.S. Department of Education in May released a list of 55 colleges under investigation to determine whether their handling of sex assaults and harassment violated federal laws.

University of Oregon was not on that list but Jennifer Freyd, a psychology professor who led the study, and other school officials are part of a White House effort to develop a nationwide survey that can be conducted on campuses nationwide, she said.

"If you've got a survey that lets you make meaningful comparisons between colleges, then colleges will have a meaningful incentive to reduce the violence that's being measured," Freyd said.

The late-summer Web-based survey included 982 students. Freyd said she was hesitant to draw broader conclusions about the campus from her findings because, for example, her respondents were younger, whiter, and more female than the general school population.

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