The campus climate survey administered this year was intended to gather information about the rate of incidents of sexual violence and knowledge of policies and resources. By law, every SUNY campus is required to participate in this survey project. This report includes an Executive Summary that may be used for public websites or other campus publications. As per policy ‘Results will be published on the campus website providing no personally identifiable information shall be shared’ Details and recommendations are also included in this report:
http://system.suny.edu/sexual-violence-prevention-workgroup/policies/campus-climate/
Executive Summary
Consistent with New York State Education Law 129-B and policies of The State University of New York, SUNY Oswego participated in the 2021 University-wide Biennial SUNY Uniform Campus Climate Survey. The Survey gathered information about student and employee experience with sexual and interpersonal violence and knowledge of policies and resources. SUNY Oswego, working with SUNY and community colleagues (including students, faculty, and staff), will use these data to improve response to violence, develop prevention programs, and will continue to study the issue.
Campus SVP “Climate” Student Results
This document accompanies the summary table of Oswego’s results from the Spring 2021 SUNY Sexual Violence Prevention Survey. Most items in the table have comparable data from 2019, but some items or structures were new in 2021. This table only summarizes the results from the student survey.
Improvements
SUNY Oswego saw some improvements in student understanding of various topics,
aggregated details are as follows:
- Knowledge of how to contact the Title IX Coordinator has gone up 14%
- Understanding of Affirmative Consent and what makes someone able to consent has gone up slightly
- Understanding the difference between the school’s disciplinary system and the
- justice system has risen
- Knowledge of on-campus resources has increased
- A general increase in the feeling that other students would step in to help alleviate uncomfortable or dangerous situations
Regressions
SUNY Oswego saw some regressions relating to student awareness or understanding of the following topics. Note that the Spring 2021 data were collected during a time of on-campus COVID restrictions.
Overall, the majority of students believe that the college would take reports seriously, conduct a fair investigation and provide any victims with support during the investigation if a violation were to occur (question 50).
Employee SVP Climate Survey Results
In Spring 2021, SUNY Oswego employees participated in the System’s bi-annual Climate Survey. Email invitations to 1,148 faculty and staff resulted in 416 completed surveys, for a 36% response rate and a 95% confidence interval of ±4%. The System has done similar surveys in 2017 and 2019. When appropriate, this summary will include any important changes from those earlier administrations.
Knowledge of campus policies
- Students were somewhat less involved in clubs and Greek life
- Students’ awareness of receiving brochures or trainings about assault has fallen
- Knowledge of the Campus’ amnesty policy has dropped 10%
- Students who have reported intimate partner violence has increased (question 32)
- The number of students assaulted by strangers has increased (question 26)
- As in 2019, students are generally not reporting assaults or other issues
- 94% of respondents know that SUNY Oswego has “policies and procedures specifically addressing sexual assault”, matching the same rate in 2019.
- The percentages of employees who report receiving information about topics specifically related to sexual assault is 80% to 85% and is unchanged from 2019. For example, 87% know “how to report a sexual assault”.
- Employees are more likely to know how to report sexual assault (87%), harassment (87%) and domestic/dating violence (82%) than stalking (79%).(The difference between stalking and the areas of greater knowledge is statistically significant, with chi-square statistic of 16.5007 and p-value of .000049).
In 2019, 83% of respondents know “how to find the Title IX Coordinator”. In 2021, 88% of respondents knew “how to contact the Title IX Coordinator”. (The 5% improvement is statistically significant, with chi-square statistic of 3.895 and p-value of .0484).
The percentages of employees who know the difference between confidentiality and privacy (75%), who know the definition of Affirmative Consent (80%), and who know the difference between the college disciplinary process and the criminal justice system (79%) are significantly higher than the percentage who know about SUNY's alcohol and/or drug use amnesty policy in reporting sexual violence (55%) (chi-square statistic is at least 42.1862, with p-values < .00001).
Experiences
- In 2021, 10% of employee respondents indicated having had a student disclose unwanted sexual experiences within the past year. This matches the 11% rate from 2019.
- Twenty-one percent of respondents who learned of a student’s unwanted sexual experiences did not officially report the incident. This is not significantly different from 17% in 2019. People have a range of reasons for not reporting, but obviously the vast majority did make official reports.
- In 2021, 3% of employees indicated that during the last year they experienced unwanted sexual comments, sexual slurs, or demeaning jokes, which is down slightly from 2019 (6%). Most of these experiences were initiated by another member of the campus community (students, faculty or staff) and occurred in the campus setting.
- The percentage of employees receiving unwanted sexually suggestive digital communications is similarly low (3%) and unchanged from 2019.
The next Climate Survey will be administered in the Spring Semester of 2023. More information about the Survey is available at https://www.suny.edu/climatesurvey.