A late-night encounter with a drunken classmate is at the beginning of many college sexual assault stories. But in the one Gracie Ryan tells, the woman—a third-degree taekwondo black belt—feels uncomfortable, gets up, and leaves. “Even if a girl is scared to death,” she tells Ryan, “if she walks into a room tall and confident, it’s like, don’t fuck with me.” Ryan’s article checks in on the progress of various sexual assault prevention programs offered at the University of Montana following federal investigations into mishandling of reports of sexual violence in 2012. Students formed self-defense classes. The university requires students living in dorms to undergo bystander-intervention training. Ryan checks in on each program and pairs text and photos to chronicle a university and its students trying lots of different ways, with varying success, to solve a problem that plagues too many campuses.
Keeping a University Accountable: Our College Pick
A late-night encounter with a drunken classmate is at the beginning of many college sexual assault stories. But in the one Gracie Ryan tells, the woman—a third-degree taekwondo black belt—feels uncomfortable, gets up, and leaves.
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