By Anna Braxton and Margo Stockdale

A rape was reported at Emory University at 11:15 p.m. on Feb. 11. Two hours later, a campus-wide email was sent out informing the Emory community about the incident. According to police reports, the alleged rapist may be connected to several other instances of sexual assault in the Atlanta and Decatur area. This incident is but one instance of a problem many college students are facing across the country.

Sexual assault, including rape, has reached a high level on colleges and university campuses. Nearly one in five women will experience some form of sexual violence while in college, and 84 percent of those women said the incident happened within the first four semesters on campus, according to polls conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice and a study entitled “An Examination of Sexual Violence Against College Women.” Only around 12 percent of these cases, however, are reported.

The alleged assailant was not reported to be an Emory University student, but many instances of sexual violence occur on campus often at college fraternities and sororities. In the February 2014 Atlantic article entitled “The Dark Power of Fraternities,” author Caitlin Flanagan stated that 15 percent of fraternity insurance liability claims are from sexual assault. For comparison, hazing-related liability claims amount to only 7 percent.

“College brings with it a new sense of independence, and many students are experimenting for the first time with dating, intimate relationships, and their sexual identities,” Michele Passonno, Relationship and Sexual Violence Coordinator from UGA, said in an email interview.

According to a report by the Harvard School of Public Health entitled “Correlates of Rape while Intoxicated in a National Sample of College Women,” university-aged women who live in sorority housing are 1.6 times more likely to be victims of sexual assault than women living in on-campus dormitories, and up to three times more likely than students living off campus. A report by the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, entitled “Coercive Sexual Strategies,” claims that men belonging to fraternities are more likely to perpetrate sexual assault or sexual violence than men who do not belong to a fraternity.

The University of Georgia reported 17 incidents of sexual violence in its 2012 crime statistics report, which was the second highest amount of reported violent crimes at UGA that year. The university started the Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention program to assist students who have experienced relationship or sexual violence as well as lead a peer-educator student group aimed to help co-facilitate outreach efforts.

“Sexual violence impacts all of us,” Passonno said. “We all have a responsibility to help foster a college culture where people are treated with respect. Nobody deserves to be victimized.”

Not only is sexual assault a growing problem on campuses, but many colleges and universities have come under criticism for mishandling the cases brought to them. According to a poll conducted by the Huffington Post, 12 percent of those polled believe schools do a good job in handling sexual assault cases, while 42 percent believe schools do a poor job. Federal complaints were filed on the mishandling of sexual assault cases at several schools including Harvard, Dartmouth and Princeton.

The alarming number of sexual assaults on college campuses was brought to the attention of President Barack Obama, who, on Jan. 22, mobilized a task force to protect students from sexual violence.

In response to President Obama’s compiled task force, The U.S. Education Department’s chief enforcer of civil rights reported that her office plans to begin working more efficiently to ensure colleges abide by federal law in handling cases of reported sexual violence.

Georgia Tech Health Educator Lee Helmken expressed optimism about colleges’ and universities’ recent efforts to prevent sexual violence.

“I think colleges are coming a long way,” she said. “All these things are moving forward to a point where universities have no choice but to take it seriously and to handle it.”