This story discusses sexual assault. If you or someone you know may be a victim of sexual violence, confidential support, information and advice are available at the National Sexual Assault Hotline by calling 800-656-4673. Text chat is also available online.

Jennifer Freyd wasn’t surprised when University of Oregon officials announced last week that they’d received five reports of sexual assault on or near campus within the first week of classes.

Nationally, more than half of college sexual assaults take place at the start of the fall term, something experts often call the “red zone.”

What surprised Freyd, a retired UO psychology professor and national expert on sexual violence, was that the university sent out an alert right away.

“One of my big frustrations with Oregon and a lot of other schools is they don’t follow their Clery Act and send out timely notices,” Freyd said, referring to a federal law that requires colleges and universities to report crime statistics.

UO officials said the University of Oregon Police Department sends these alerts when certain crimes are reported on or near campus property, in compliance with federal law. But if institutions neglect their legal obligations to report, Freyd argues, “people don’t realize what a high-risk situation it is.”

Experts like Freyd say the recently reported incidents at UO and the national news about the alleged rape of a female student by seven men at Cornell University in 2024 are only a fraction of the problem. Similar incidents of sexual violence have happened before, including the alleged rape of a female athlete at UO in 2014, involving three members of the Ducks’ basketball team.

But she also sees this as a learning moment for university administrators. OPB spoke with Freyd to make sense of it all.

What follows is a select transcript of OPB’s interview with Jennifer Freyd. Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What are you seeing as the national news about Cornell, and the latest UO reports, unfold?

A: I don’t know why this case [at Cornell] has caught national attention. I mean, there is so much sexual assault on campus, and in some ways, you know, this is particularly dramatic because there were seven alleged perpetrators, and there were the messages. But basically, I don’t know why this one.

But it does create a learning opportunity, an educational opportunity. Since people seem to be paying attention, then it’s like an opportunity, certainly true for higher education administrators, to address institutional betrayal in ways that help protect students from additional harm.

[University of Oregon] sent out a Clery alert saying there were five sexual assaults in the last week. This is going to sound horrible, but of course there are five sexual assaults. There are always five sexual assaults during red zone. At least. This is … not different. But they fail to send out these alerts most years.

Why did they pick this week to do it? I think maybe it’s about Cornell. I mean, I don’t know because I’m not privy to any of the deliberations. But it’s a very interesting coincidence, at the least, that a few days after the Cornell news broke, that alert went out at the University of Oregon.

Cornell names former acting U.S. attorney general to review rape case

Q: And what if the UO alert did come out because all eyes are on institutions because of Cornell? What do you make of that?

A: I mean, in a way, that’s good. It’s a good side effect, I guess. If it makes universities follow the law, never mind, do the right thing.

When I was grappling with the University of Oregon back when over their failure to send out Clery alerts and stuff, they would make the argument, “Oh, well, there’ll be too many, and it will scare students.” A graduate student and I spent a whole lot of time helping them draft language and ways they could do this that would not be too traumatizing or distressing, but that would still convey the news.

Like, maybe a weekly summary with numbers, as opposed to alerts for every single incident. They could comply with the law and be transparent, but also be sensitive to people’s wellbeing when reading these alerts.

Another problem was that when they did the alerts back then, they tended to be very victim-blaming, and we helped them come up with better language. In the end, they did adopt a few of our suggestions. [UO resources can be seen here.]

I had not seen an alert like [the one last week] in decades. Decades. If you look at the data we collected at Oregon, and look at the national data, especially during what they call the “red zone,” the rates of sexual assault are very high.

And there’s going to be many, many more that weren’t reported because so many people are not saying anything to officials.

Q: What do you think is missing from the conversation right now?

A: Sexual assault is bad for people. When there’s institutional betrayal, things get worse; it adds harm. That’s kind of the big picture.

People, if they get upset at all, talk about how the institutions fail to respond well afterward. And that’s all important and meaningful. But I think it’s even a bigger deal that they fail to prevent this from occurring.

These institutions say, “Oh, it’s too hard. We’re doing what we can.” We have people take these little training, you know, two-hour or one-hour online training things, or whatever it is, the little gestures. But for an educational institution, trying to claim that’s sufficient for prevention? It’s so insufficient.

And furthermore, and this is what really gets at me, is that they know — the University of Oregon knows; I’m sure Cornell knew — that fraternities add a lot of risk. That sexual assault rates are higher — significantly higher for fraternities — and people in sororities are at significantly higher risk.

They’ve known this for decades. They know it so well that, for many institutions, they require fraternities to purchase liability insurance for sexual assault. And yet, they don’t stop it.

It’s terrible to have a bad response, but really, these things shouldn’t be happening at all. And institutions could make such a difference in the rates of these problems, and they’re just not doing what they should be doing there.

I think if there’s a lesson to learn from this, it’s that institutions should be putting much more resources and energy into prevention.

How the Cornell case is affecting women who have experienced sexual assault

Q: Some experts say campuses with higher rates reported are actually a sign that students feel more able or comfortable to report. Is that your take?

A: I would draw a huge distinction between two different ways of getting rates.

One way is through some kind of official channels and reporting, whether it’s a student going directly to the Title IX office or telling a faculty member, etc. That’s what I would call sort of “official reporting.”

And then there’s what you can learn from scientifically sound, anonymous surveys, where you create the conditions under which most people feel safe disclosing what happened to them, and you ask the questions in ways that don’t scare people off.

So, you don’t use words like rape or sexual assault. You describe it in terms of scenarios, and you ask, “Has something like this ever happened to you?”

When you look at that second category, I would say, first of all, it’s a vastly higher rate than the first category because most cases don’t get into the official record. So, you get really, really alarming numbers when you look at the scientifically sound, anonymous surveys.

We’ve done lots of such surveys, and as an example, at the University of Oregon, some terrible number, [about 35% of female students, according to survey data Freyd collected at UO], have been sexually assaulted during college.

If two scientists gave the same survey using the same methodology at two schools and got different rates, I would take that seriously.

What I’m trying to say is, it depends on how you’re collecting this information as to whether it represents some underlying rate of sexual assault or more the people’s comfort with telling the university what happened to them.

Q: Do you see the fact that people are outraged about Cornell as a sign of hope?

A: Yeah, I do. I mean, there are parts I take more hope from than others. I worry about outrage that’s very focused on individual perpetrators, because I think it often is counterproductive and misses the dynamics that are occurring in the situations. But the outrage that’s focused on the institutions and on the culture that would perpetuate this sort of situation — I think that’s just fabulous.

When I think about the individual perpetrators, I believe we have to hold people accountable for their behavior, for sure. But if our goal is to understand and prevent, we have to look at people in context and understand the forces that shape their behavior.

And this is where I get back to my anger about fraternities. [Note: Freyd was the co-author of a study published in the journal Dignity that found members of fraternities and sororities are at increased risk of being involved in sexual violence or sexual harassment.]

If we just act like the individuals are bad apples, and we just have to punish them, it does not fix the actual problem, which is this much broader cultural and institutional corruption that’s there.

Q: As someone who’s worked in the university system for as long as you did, do you see a world in which fraternity or sorority-like institutions could still exist and be better?

A: I used to think, “Oh, we could just fix the fraternities.” Students have a lot of real needs that fraternities and sororities seem to meet. Needs people have for community, belonging and housing. They’re all legitimate needs, and the fraternities and sororities meet some of those needs. And they often do good things in the community as well.

But there’s something so broken, so corrupt about them that I’ve, over time, changed my mind. I think it’s too broken.

It is about money and power. It takes some real courage to say, “None of this is worth the harm of even one more sexual assault.”

I think we should get rid of the current fraternities, as some colleges have done. And that doesn’t mean that there can’t be some sort of fraternity-like organization. It doesn’t mean there can’t be communal living arrangements.

Cornell Jane Doe's attorney says she told police in 2024: 'I was raped'

Q: What would your advice be to families and prospective students when they’re looking at colleges?

A: You need more than one source of information, but the one important one would be looking at the university’s own website. First of all, how hard is it to find a page about sexual assault? Do you have to dig to find it? How clear is it? Does it look like a resource you could use in a moment of crisis?

And then, what is the information on that page? Is it guaranteeing a set of safety measures? Parents can read that and probably get a pretty good idea of the university’s stance.

But I would not skip another source of information, which is asking current students about it.

There’s usually some opportunity to visit and stay overnight, where you get a chance to actually talk in a private way with students and ask them what kind of prevention efforts they’ve experienced, what they’ve understood the university’s response to be when somebody is sexually assaulted. Even if they have been fortunate enough not to be sexually assaulted, they probably know somebody who has been.

I would trust that more than any official claim from the university, because it tells you what it’s really like to be there on that campus.

Resources for survivors, family members, educators and advocates are available through organizations such as the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/10/08/uo-jennifer-freyd-cornell-rape-case/