Nursing students with disabilities: Is your campus assault prevention program inclusive?

A study, conducted by the National Council on Disability, a federal agency, suggests that undergraduates with a disability are more likely to be sexually assaulted than are their peers without a disability, and that colleges don’t know how to support them.

About 31.6 percent of female undergraduates with a disability reported having been sexually assaulted, compared with 18.4 percent of undergraduate women without a disability, the study found.

“Sexual assault has become a topic of concern on campuses and with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, but seldom has the conversation included consideration of the needs of college students with disabilities,” said Wendy Harbour, a member of the council and director of the National Center for College Students With Disabilities, in a news release.

The study, described in a report titled “Not on the Radar: Sexual Assault of College Students With Disabilities,” is the first federally funded examination of how the needs of sexual-assault victims with disabilities are treated in colleges’ policies and procedures.

“Campus assault prevention and education programs are not inclusive of students with disabilities,” the report says, “and college staff lack awareness that such programs should be accessible to students with disabilities, and staff are not trained in disability accommodations.”

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Students-With-Disabilities-Are/242400

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With thanks,

Donna