Another reckoning over sexual assault in US colleges is starting. Officials must listen | Moira Donegan

School administrations seem to endanger survivors' access to education more often than they hold their abusers accountable

An estimated 300 students walked out of their classes last week at Skidmore College, a small, private school located on a tree-lined campus in Saratoga Springs, New York. The students gathered on the campus and began speaking into bullhorns about their experiences of sexual violence, and the various forms of hostility and indifference they received from college administrators when they reported them. According to reporting by Rachel Silberstein in the Albany Times Union, the demonstration was sparked by a controversial decision by the Skidmore administration to ban a young female student from campus after she posted about her experiences of sexual violence online.

The woman's suspension comes as Skidmore students, disillusioned with their campus reporting system, have increasingly taken to social media to anonymously disclose their experiences of sexual violence within the Skidmore community. In the posts, many of which have been gathered on an anonymous Instagram account, young women describe experiences ranging from stalking to rapes to domestic violence. Some were allegedly cornered in dorms and forced to watch their classmates masturbate; others were groped late at night, by strangers at a party or while walking on the campus quad. The accounts vary in the character and severity of the gender violence that they describe, but the students seem united in their conviction that the school administration antagonizes survivors and endangers their access to education more often than it meaningfully intervenes to protect them or to hold their abusers accountable. As one post on the anonymous Instagram account put it, describing one student's experience of reporting through the school administration: Little has been done, and I fear retaliation from the college."