The first six to eight weeks of every fall semester is known as “the red zone.” That’s when students are more likely to experience sexual or gender-based misconduct through sexual assault and sexual harassment, according to Mary Martinez, the executive director of the Office of Civil Rights and Institutional Equity at Central Michigan University.
“It's very widely known – and a lot of studies that work with college campuses – it’s the red zone," Martinez said. "There's a lot of theories on why. There are a lot of new students, first-year students in an unfamiliar place, wanting to explore, having a little bit of freedom, not really knowing their surroundings, making new friends. You're friends with your roommate but also they're strangers those first couple days, so it's just a kind of a more vulnerable situation.” Because of this “red zone,” OCRIE sees an increase of reported incidences in the fall.
“Other than that, it really varies," Martinez said. "We see students who are having a difficulty with other individuals based on who they are as a person, whether that be gender identity, sexual orientation ... social economic status.” OCRIE oversees CMU’s affirmative action and equal opportunity programs, does outreach training, provides resources and supportive measures for survivors and makes sure the university is not using discriminatory hiring practices. Martinez said OCRIE handles reports of sexual aggression and domestic violence.
“The majority of our time is spent meeting with individuals – I keep saying students, but we work with faculty and staff as well," Martinez said. "We work with individuals one-on-one to discuss what their concerns are, how the university can help support them in being successful and explaining what all their options are.”
According to Martinez, this is so that they’re informed of all their options and the rights they need to take the next steps. One misconception about sexual aggression and domestic violence that Martinez has seen surrounds the idea of who can be affected.
“I think one of the common (misconceptions) is that sexual assault and dating domestic violence are women's issues. They're really an everybody issue," Martinez said. "Sexual assault is more prevalently reported by women. However, men and nonbinary individuals are survivors as well and we need to make sure that they have resources and support and take that stigma away.”
According to Martinez, another common misconception is that people think nothing will happen if they report something. “Whenever someone reports something to our office, we work with them to find out what they need, offer them supports, resources,” Martinez said.
She said that support can mean anything from housing reassignments to reaching out to professors or investigating at the university.
Martinez said that OCRIE is and strives to be trauma-informed so that it is able to understand how people deal with trauma differently.
“Trauma-informed is the concept that trauma manifests in an individual in their own unique ways," Martinez said. "Everyone has experienced trauma in their life, but how it reacts in their body can be different. So understanding that one person who's experienced the trauma may not react in a way that would be typical. Trauma-informed is ... understanding that trauma can also change over time.”
OCRIE can be reached through the CMU CARES form, phone calls, email and fax.
“If you're not sure where to go, even if we're not the right office, if you're having maybe concerns with your academics and you just don't know where to go, we can help point you in the right direction as well," Martinez said, “but really we serve as a resource to help connect individuals with what they need.”
According to Martinez, there many resources on campus.
“The campus police are a great resource,” Martinez said. “There's the Counseling Center, Residence Life, Student Affairs, really anyone on campus that you feel comfortable going to. … CMU is a community that cares, and it's not just one office that does things.” Sexual Aggression Peer Advocatesis “a survivor-centered and trauma-informed paraprofessional student organization that serves those affected by sexual aggression through 24/7 services during fall and spring semesters, including a confidential support line and direct, in-person services,” according to its webpage.
Megan Varner, the director of SAPA, said sexual aggression includes sexual assault, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, stalking and harassment. All SAPA advocates are CMU students.
“We’re an entirely peer-to-peer advocacy program, and they receive 52 hours of training in the fall and eight more hours in the spring,” Varner said. “We have a ton of campus partners come in and educate us about the resources that they have so that we're ready, you know, to accompany people to those places.
"There's a range of different emotions and a range of different reactions to trauma that occur,” Varner said. “Sometimes there's a lack of recognition for that. These experiences are traumatic for people and healing from trauma is not linear."
"And then a lot of it is hands-on practice and kind of doing a lot of those listening things and really getting the feel for those moments so that they're really prepared when they get out there to use those skills.” Varner said can "take on many different forms."
"Financial, sexual, physical – there's just a lot of different ways,” she said.
Faculty and staff are also not exempt from these effects, she said.
Varner said SAPA is working its way back up to helping about six students per week, the average before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Varner said that two common misconceptions she has seen deal with how people process trauma and how it presents for people.
“There's a range of different emotions and a range of different reactions to trauma that occur,” Varner said. “Sometimes there's a lack of recognition for that. These experiences are traumatic for people and healing from trauma is not linear." CMU has been one of the nation’s leaders in having resources to help people dealing with sexual aggression and domestic violence, according to Varner.
“We've had services like ours a lot longer than most other universities and areas around the country," Varner said. "CMU really embraced sexual aggression and domestic violence in our student code of conduct long before there was ever a need to put it in there.”
Varner remembers CMU having these resources when she was a student here.
“CMU has been at the forefront of doing stuff like this, doing this work and prevention education for a long time. I know it's really required now across the country to do things, but even when I was a student here, which is a long time ago, they were doing a lot of work that wasn't being seen elsewhere,” Varner said.
The Central Michigan University Police Departmentcovers CMU’s campus. It works with Residence Life, SAPA and OCRIE when an incident of a sexual assault or domestic violence happens. CMUPD also work with the McLaren Central Michigan Hospital and their sexual assault nurse examiner to collect evidence.
CMUPD collects physical evidence, DNA evidence and electronic evidence such as cell phones in cases of sexual aggression or misconduct.
CMUPD Lt. Mike Sienkiewicz recommends utilizing power in numbers when on campus. “We always encourage people to travel as groups and go out with friends and make plans,” Sienkiewicz said. “Go out together, take care of each other, make a plan. There is a lot you can do just from a bystander or being somebody’s friend.” According to the CMUPD Annual Security and Fire Safety report as of October 2022, CMUPD dealt with rape, statutory rape, fondling, domestic violence, dating violence and stalking.
In 2019, there were 10 rape incidents, seven of which were on campus, one was off campus and two on public property. There were 10 total incidents of domestic violence that year – nine on campus and one off campus. In 2020, there were eight rape incidents – four on campus, one off campus and three on public property. There were five domestic violence incidents – three on campus and two on public property.
In 2021, there were eight rape incidents – six of them on campus, one rape incident off campus and one on public property. There were 14 domestic violence incidents: eight on campus, one off campus and five on public property. Sienkiewicz suspects that there’s a larger number of incidents that are never reported.
“We know that the vast majority of those crimes are never reported to anybody,” Sienkiewicz said. “It’d be hard to say an exact number, but we know statistically speaking that most of those crimes go unreported.”