The business of preventing sexual assault on campus
The federal government is cracking down on college sexual assaults by putting more than 70 schools under investigation for their handling of such cases – and entrepreneurs and consultants are finding business opportunities.
They’re creating smartphone apps to let students easily notify friends or campus police if they get into a scary situation, and developing training programs for campus-led sexual assault investigations.
“With a heavily-regulated industry, you’re going to see a lot of products and services offered,” says Peter Lake, a campus safety expert at Stetson University College of Law.
Stetson says many schools aren’t set up to deal with new rules governing sexual assault prevention and reporting. They need the extra help.
“A lot of us were using coconuts and Dixie cups with string to communicate, and now we have complicated software programs that actually work to get data in real time,” he says.
One app, called LiveSafe, lets students give campus security anonymous tips about crimes or potentially dangerous situations in real time. Schools pay a few bucks per student on up for the services.
By some estimates, as many as 80 percent of sexual assaults on college campuses go unreported. LiveSafe chief executive Jenny Abramson thinks apps like hers can help change that.
“We find that in a number of places we’re in, they’re getting twice as many – or even ten times as many – tips from a student to the safety official, around things they ordinarily wouldn’t share by calling or other more traditional means,” she says.
In addition to entrepreneurs like Abramson, lots of consultants and lawyers are marketing videos and training programs around sexual assaults. They’re betting schools would rather pay their fees than face much stiffer penalties from the government. Without the proper programs in place, colleges can jeopardize federal funding and get fined hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But Dana Bolger is skeptical about some of the products getting marketed as a means to reduce sexual assaults, such as a nail polish that can detect date rape drugs when you dip your fingers into a drink. Bolger was a rape victim in college and is now an activist and co-founder of the organization Know Your IX. She’s worried the technology may be more dazzling than effective.
“These products, while often well-intentioned, try to lull us into a false sense of security,” she says, “as though we can just innovate our way out of systemic violence against women.”
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