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Students have assembled a new group in response to the recent sexual assaults on campus.
Students Against Rape Culture, founded by students from UNM’s Women’s Resource Center, is about one month old and has 10 members.
Angela Catena, a graduate assistant at the WRC and one of the founders of SARC, said SARC is composed of students from various University organizations, such as the LGBTQ Resource Center, the Rape Crisis Center and the Phi Kappa Alpha fraternity. She said students founded the group to represent student’s opinions on the assaults better.
“It started as a group of students that got together who wanted to do something about it,” she said. “We wanted to voice our opinions. We felt like we needed a place for students to discuss our concerns.”
The first of the recent sexual assaults happened Jan. 27, when two men allegedly groped a female student at Johnson Field under her clothes. The second assault happened Feb. 4, when a man allegedly groped a female student over her clothes near Castetter Hall.
Catena said SARC aims to give students a platform to make suggestions as to how the UNM administration can improve campus safety. Catena said UNM could raise student awareness of rape culture if the administration would listen more to students regarding the issue.
“If there’s awareness about it, we can change it so that people have more acceptance and understanding towards others,” she said. “The University should work collaboratively with the students for their needs and not just look at it at an administrative level.”
She said SARC also focuses on educating students about rape culture in which victims of sexual assault are blamed instead of the aggressors. The group’s plan is to focus on conducting forums where only students can voice their concerns.
“People want to be able to have their voices be heard rather than just hear the administration’s side,” she said. “We’re deconstructing rape culture and its myths. Ultimately, it’s awareness that’s the most useful.”
To address the issue of sexual assault, the University held an open forum Feb. 8. Officials from various University departments attended the event to ask students for their suggestions on how to increase campus safety. No UNMPD representatives attended this forum.
On Feb. 18, SARC conducted an open forum that Catena said aimed to supplement the University’s official forum. She said that although it was disappointing that police weren’t at the previous forum, the University is doing its best to respond to the assaults.
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Catena said the forum aimed to inform students about how frequent sexual assaults are.
“We’re voicing our opinions on what students need because they are the victims most of the time,” she said. “Attacks and assaults do happen on campus, and it’s not a rare thing. It’s more common than we think it is.”
Catena said SARC plans to conduct more student forums in the future, and will hold another one in the following weeks. She said that although the creation of SARC did not cost the University anything, the group will ask for funding from UNM at some point in the future.
