The University of Massachusetts has a problem with sexual assault – hence the various legal battles over it, hence the public relations campaign by the University against it, hence the countless whispered-yet-never-publicized stories of one woman after another forced into non-consensual sex. When it comes to the propriety of women over their own bodies, UMass has a crisis on its hands.

The administration, however, doesn’t seem very interested in addressing this crisis. Despite a Justice Department investigation, the desperately needed campus-wide conversation that exposes the interstices between patriarchy, rape culture and the vast power differentials between some members of the campus “community” and others has yet to arrive.

Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy, President Robert Caret and the Board of Trustees have issued platitudes against sexual assault, but they have not set up an independent investigation to dig deep into the roots of sexual assault on our campus. They have said nothing that offer us “analyses of the world-wide absurdity of endangered female existence,” to quote the literary critic June Jordan. They have been silent about the complex ways in which some women are more endangered by the culture of silence than others, particularly economically disadvantaged women, women of color, disabled women and transwomen, all groups that experience higher sexual assault rates.

While the silence is ominous, the facts are even worse. The Justice Department investigation into the University in regards potential violations of Title IX, which bans sexual assault and sexual harassment at universities receiving federal funds. Over the past five years, of the 187 complaints of sexual harassment or assault made to the University’s Title IX enforcement office, only 23 resulted in enforcement action of any kind. Of the 23, only eight resulted in termination or demotion – the other 15 were effectively perfunctory slaps on the wrist.

This disconcerting information has not been previously released. I filed a public records request for it in April and did not receive the relevant data until July. The data presents us with only two possible conclusions: One of these is despite numerous studies indicating that the vast majority of sexual assaults and harassment go unreported, five out of six people who make a report to the Title IX office are either exaggerating or lying about their claim. The other possible conclusion is there is a culture of non-enforcement when it comes to sexual assault and harassment on our campus. The latter is the only intellectually honest conclusion that I can come to.

If we acknowledge that the Title IX reporting system has broken down, it needs to lead to a corresponding acknowledgement that the chancellor, the president and the Board of Trustees have demonstrated that they are wholly uninterested in bringing about an end to this crisis. The campus needs to come together, independently of the administration, to receive justice.

One way to get justice is to expand the institutions that place a check on the administration’s otherwise free-flowing power. The only institutions on this campus that do this are the five labor unions. For union members who have been sexually harassed by a supervisor, they can go through the grievance procedure for an independent way to address the situation at hand. Yet workers at auxiliary services and the whole mass of undergraduate student workers, with the exception of resident assistants, lack even this basic way to attain justice. Strengthening the contracts of the rest of the workers on campus will also ensure that all union members on campus can work with the reassurance that if they are sexually assaulted, they will receive justice.

We need to consider the ways in which the present form of hierarchical leadership at UMass is utterly incapable of meeting the needs of the students and workers, and how we can replace them with a nonhierarchical educational model premised on the goals of equity and inclusion. A new culture of worker militancy, beginning with undergraduate workers unionizing, is necessary for undergraduate women to be able to report sexual assault or harassment on the job without fear of retaliation, and for the campus to start this much needed conversation.

We know where the administration stands: maintaining their bloated bureaucracy and power at all costs, to the clear detriment of everyone on this campus, and particularly the women who find themselves victims of rape, sexual assault or sexual harassment. The question is where do we – UMass’ 99 percent – stand?

Matthew Cunningham-Cook is a Collegian contributor. He can be reached at [email protected].