On Monday, Saint Mary’s held the fourth annual “Raise Your Voice” symposium, highlighting the tenth anniversary of the 2015 CNN documentary “The Hunting Ground,” which covered the epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses across the country. The documentary focused in large part on cases of alleged sexual assault against Saint Mary’s students. The film specifically highlighted the story of late Saint Mary’s student Lizzy Seeberg’s death, who committed suicide after being threatened for reporting Notre Dame football player Prince Shembo for sexual assault. In the documentary, former Notre Dame Police Department (NDPD) lieutenant Patrick Cottrell also claimed that Notre Dame had repeatedly avoided criminally charging sexual assault.
After the documentary’s release, Notre Dame was one of over 150 universities investigated by the U.S. Department of Education for Title IX violations. Its content also sparked outrage within the tri-campus, leading to a wide variety of responses from administrators, faculty and students. Administrators defended their institutions. Students participated in panels. Presidential task forces were launched. Protests were held. Speakers were invited. Programs were established. All of these actions built up to the first signing of the Memorandum of Understanding in 2017, in which the Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross administrations committed to “the sharing of information across our campus communities regarding awareness and prevention education, resources, reporting options and procedures.”
And yet, 10 years after the release of the Hunting Ground and eight years after the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding, the tri-campus still continues to have a serious sexual violence problem. Since the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, the NDPD has received five reports of rape and five reports of sexual assault on campus, according to their daily crime log. This of course does not include instances of sexual assault that are not reported, which the National Sexual Violence Resource Center estimates make up roughly 90% of all cases of sexual assault on college campuses. A cavalier attitude about sexual assault still pervades parts of campus, best demonstrated with the closing of Zahm Hall just a few years ago.
In accordance with Title IX and the Memorandum of Understanding, each campus has a full-time Title IX officer and has implemented Clery Act policies, such as annually reporting basic crime data and requiring some type of online consent training. While these commitments are important, comprehensively addressing sexual assault on college campuses requires more than meeting a minimum legal standard. It necessitates a comprehensive approach across all three campuses that seeks to both prevent assaults and provide appropriate resources for survivors. More can and must be done in this regard.
Firstly, the jurisdiction of NDPD should be expanded so that instances of sexual assault at Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross can be investigated by either NDPD or St. Joseph County Police. When an instance of sexual assault is reported, the survivor has the option to pursue both an internal Title IX investigation and a separate criminal investigation. While NDPD can currently investigate any instance of sexual assault that takes place on Notre Dame’s campus, it lacks jurisdiction on the campuses of Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross, even if the perpetrator is a Notre Dame student.
Currently, according to the University’s procedures, survivors of sexual assault at Notre Dame can choose which jurisdiction investigates their case, should they seek a criminal investigation. There is no reason why students at Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross should not have the same options as Notre Dame students. While some might still view St. Joseph County Police as the better force to investigate their case, others might perceive NDPD as more efficient and more accustomed to dealing with these sorts of cases. Admittedly, the legal process of expanding NDPD’s jurisdiction might be a complicated and difficult one, but we believe a uniform set of options across the tri-campus for criminal investigations of sexual assault is necessary.
Secondly, we encourage all three campuses to be more transparent with sexual violence reports by sending out tri-campus crime alerts via email when instances of sexual assault are reported, specifying the location where the incident took place. The University has not sent out any crime alerts since October 2023, when students were made aware of drink spiking in a men’s residence hall, despite multiple cases of sexual assault being reported since then. In the Memorandum of Understanding, our institutions committed to “share information related to the safety of our communities with impacted participating institution(s), as permitted by law.” Surely, alerting the tri-campus community about reports of rape and sexual assault would be an effective way to make good on this promise to share information about the safety of the community. Moreover, including the location of the incident, which is done for most other reported crimes, would further improve transparency and accountability.
A University spokesman stated in an email to The Observer that NDPD only sends out these alerts when “there is an ongoing threat to the University community, and the report is sufficiently timely such that a warning will aid in the prevention of similar crimes.” Similarly, Saint Mary’s director of campus safety Phil Bambenek stated crime reports or timely warnings are only issued in the event of “crimes that have occurred that students should be aware of” or “continue to present a threat to welfare” to students. Saint Mary’s Title IX officer Liz Baumann said these warnings are usually not administered for sexual assault reports because “the immediate threat has ended” by the time they’ve received a report.
Although it may be debatable what reported crimes constitute an immediate timely threat to the tri-campus community, much can be said about the impact that alerting the campus of these crimes might have in preventing future sexual assaults. Indeed, Notre Dame appeared to deem such reports necessary between 2019 and 2021, when six reports of sexual assault, ranging from misconduct to rape, were shared with the community via email. Without alerts, most members of the tri-campus community are likely unaware that rape and sexual assault occur as frequently as they do on campus. Ultimately, greater awareness of the problem can only lead to more dialogue about the issue of sexual violence and more vigilance in preventing it.
Finally, we argue that the Green Dot bystander training program should be made mandatory for all tri-campus students and faculty to complete alongside any other required consent and sexual assault training. The introduction of the Green Dot training program is a laudable step the University has taken to increase awareness of sexual assault prevention, and there is no reason why all students should not be required to take it. While no training course will solve the problem of sexual assault in its entirety, such a step would further demonstrate the commitment administrators have to encouraging awareness of sexual assault and creating a safe environment on campus.
Protecting the inherent dignity of every human being is the most sacred duty of any educational institution, and especially a Catholic one. Sexual assault in any form is a violent affront to this dignity and must be treated with the utmost seriousness. And while the tri-campus administrations have taken important steps to combat sexual violence in the ten years since the “Hunting Ground” documentary, as long as rape and sexual assault continue to occur in the tri-campus, more work remains to be done. If we want to be considered a campus that caters to and advocates for the dignity of the whole person, that creates a safe and welcoming environment for students and faculty and strives to be considered one of the greatest academic institutions in the country, sexual violence must have no space here. Even one case is too many, and there will always be work to do until sexual assault reports become and remain zero.
