Colgate administrators are taking an innovative approach in addressing sex assaults on campus, by allowing students students take the reins on developing measures to address the problem.

Interestingly, historically party-oriented campus climate may be improving as a result.

Scott C. Brown, associate vice president and dean of students at Colgate University, isn’t afraid to talk about sex. More specifically, he isn’t afraid to listen to students talk about sex. In fact, he encourages it.“Lots of institutions are too afraid to talk about sexual assault. It’s something we would argue should be happening all over the place, because it’s something that’s central to the academic mission,” Brown said here last week at the annual conference of the American College Personnel Association. “This is an issue that we know — unfortunately, like alcohol — will be on campus forever.”

Brown says Colgate officials didn’t necessarily set out to deliberately change a campus culture traditionally dominated by men (the university didn’t accept women until 1970) and Greeks. But over the last few years, he and his colleagues have found that the best way to encourage a healthy sexual climate is to let the students take ownership of it.

Sometimes, that means taking a risk. When students complained that they couldn’t throw a successful party on campus, administrators covered the keg and simply asked students to report back on how it went. Eight hundred of Colgate’s 2,900 students showed up, no vandalism was reported, and nobody knew the administration had anything to do with it.

..[T]hings appear to be going well so far with the SCAC’s [Sexual Climate Advisory Committee] main goal. After dozens of lectures, performances, training, student groups and consistent communication, plus a flier campaign that drilled home the definition of consent, the data suggest the message may be getting through.Most promising is the increase from 60 to 85 percent in the percentage of students (measured by a “pretty good” response rate to a student-government issued quiz pre- and post- education campaign) who could identify and define consent. Rates of sexual assaults involving attempted and successful sexual penetration dropped by 12.5 and 8 percent, respectively, from 2012-13, according to Colgate-specific data from the National College Health Assessment. And 82 percent of students reported feeling empowered to make “healthy sexual choices that work for them.”

One of the most successful programs is a five-week course (soon to include academic credit) where students talk sex – everything from pleasure to consent – collaboratively, with the goal of helping students decide what they want from their relationships, rather than what they should avoid. The course, put together and run by Colgate student Evan Chartier, has been wildly popular: for its second and larger iteration, Yes Means Yes 2.0, the course filled up in two hours.