James Hoyt

In the days following the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, Shelby Bettles has given a lot of thought as to what the result means to her, as an advocate for sexual assault survivors on college campuses.

“I think that in the last 36 to 48 hours, I have changed so much as an individual. I think that this election first and briefly shocked me, and then that shock became very concrete in me that this is the climate -- and has been the climate -- of our United States,” the University of Kansas senior told USA TODAY College on Nov. 10.

The context: Trump was caught bragging about his ability to sexually assault women on a tape obtained by the Washington Post. Multiple women have accused him of sexually assaulting them, and he has faced lawsuits alleging sexual assault and sexual harassment.

On Nov. 8, he was elected to the highest executive office in the land.

His stunning upset of Clinton threw a curve ball at the plans of campus offices and student activists dedicated to preventing sexual assault. Advocates are concerned about the messages Trump's victory sends in a climate that often treats rape as a minor crime and, specifically, that the administration could roll back enforcement of Title IX.

The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), a national anti-sexual violence organization, is circulating a petition calling on the president-elect and Congress to address sexual assault on the national level.



Related: College women are 'disgusted' by Trump's sexism

In Lawrence, Kan., the consequences of the election are exacerbated by recent history.

In 2014, KU was rocked by a controversy over its handling of sexual assault cases after the publication of a Huffington Post article that detailed a light punishment for a sexual assault on campus. The university remains embroiled in a Title IX lawsuit in which a former rower alleges that a football player raped her in student housing. In Oct. 2015, KU created the Sexual Assault Prevention and Education Center (SAPEC) after a special task force recommended the university establish an office to address the issue directly.

Jen Brockman, the director of SAPEC, said her office is concerned about the tone the election took and how it reflects upon the electorate.

“It has given us a lot of examples to use when we speak to students about real experiences and the pervasiveness of rape culture,” Brockman said. “Not even referring to any language that was used necessarily by the president-elect, but by the way our community responded, what we heard by our country responding to, this was the typification of rape culture."



Related: Students around the country say Trump's rhetoric feeds campus rape culture

Ronni Cox, a KU senior who staffed a table provided by KU’s Emily Taylor Center for Women and Gender Equity the day after the election, said she was shocked by voters’ decision. “I worry about myself, my peers, just people around me … It just seems like it kind of makes it (rape culture) more acceptable, unfortunately,” she said.

Peggy Lorah, director of Penn State’s Center for Women Students, said the election’s result places greater pressure on members of campus communities to look out for one another and said the focus is “holding people accountable for their behaviors” as well as providing resources for students.

Lorah said the election also increases the pressure to sustain outreach to men on campus who will spend the next four years with Trump as their president.

“Most men don’t think that the behavior we see in a rape culture is okay, and most men don’t engage in it, and so it really is a matter of making sure that all men know that’s true of most men," Lorah said. "I think that that education has always been crucial and will continue to be crucial.”

And Brockman said campus advocates need to be careful in how they treat the president-elect, saying too much focus could be counterproductive in educating people on sexual assault and rape culture.

"It's really easy for us, as a culture ... to look at this one individual and to say 'they are not representative of us,' to 'other' them," Brockman said. "That's a false sense of comfort. The views and rhetoric expressed throughout this election cycle in regards to rape culture are a hundred percent representative of the views expressed across our culture and our community. ... The bigger concern is that it's so normalized that we don't recognize it as being violence."

Brockman said fears that a Trump presidency would create a permission structure for rape culture are missing the bigger picture.

"I think that that fear is dismissive of the permission structure that's already there. Rape culture didn't need Donald Trump to say that it was okay to do these things. Rape culture was already doing them and telling people it was okay to do them."

Students, activists and politicians across the country have expressed concerns over the connection between the election and incidents happening on campus.

BuzzFeed's Tyler Kingkade compiled a list of disturbing experiences women and sexual assault survivors have had before and after the election.

On Nov. 11, the Southern Poverty Law Center said it had tracked more than 200 cases of harassment after the election, including incidents targeting not only women but the LGBTQ community, Muslims and people of color.

Ultimately, advocates say the election will likely cause efforts to raise and maintain awareness of campus sexual assault to strengthen. Martha Terhaar, a KU student who ran the women and gender equity center's table alongside Cox, remains hopeful.

"I think that it’s making people want to do more and be involved and get involved and do something about it," she said. "That’s something that can come away from this as a positive."

RAINN's national sexual assault hotline can be reached at 1-800-656-4673 or via online chat. Most college campuses provide local resources for sexual assault survivors.



James Hoyt is a University of Kansas student and a USA TODAY College correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.