The Unexpected Danger of Study Abroad: Final Draft

Lauren Lynch, K '08, lived with her host family just outside of Clermont-Ferrand, France. One evening, she went out with another woman, but the buses stopped running at 11 p.m. They planned to walk partway home together. They ran into another student they knew. He offered to walk Lynch home, but wanted to stop at his place for a jacket.
Lynch said she was raped by that student. "I had to go the the process alone--in French. On Thanksgiving," she said.
Margaret Wiedenhoeft at the Center for International Programs (CIP) said that the CIP hears about two to three sexual assault reports each year. Sexual assault includes but is not limited to rape. Students don’t always come forward—Resident Directors must tell the college if they are told of an assault. The number of students who report their sexual assault is an under-representation of the actual number.
Wiedenhoeft said the initial concern of the CIP is the student’s physical wellbeing. The CIP’s main goal is to “be guided by what the survivor wants,” she said.
The CIP helps students prevent and deal with sexual assault. They distribute emergency information to students during study abroad orientation, including an optional panel called “Women and Study Abroad.” The panel explains “how being a woman can affect your experience,” she said.
Once students arrive on-site, Resident Directors give out emergency information. The Director also reminds students of how women are perceived in that culture. Students’ options in terms of formal actions vary by program.
Following the incident, Lynch told a program professor that she was raped. They professor reported the assault to the Resident Director and the CIP.
Lynch said her Resident Director “probably would have been [helpful] if I had talked to him, but I just didn’t feel comfortable.”
Last spring, Lynch recommended that the CIP hire a more approachable female assistant director for her program, and clump the students’ host families together. The CIP did both.
Lynch remains unsatisfied with the CIP’s ability to help her while she studied abroad. She feels the on-site orientation was incomplete.
“I found out later we were supposed to get a packet from out program director about what to do in emergencies and we…didn’t get one,” she said.
Lynch didn’t have internet access at her homestay, and didn’t remember the emergency information handout.
“I didn’t know I was supposed to not wash my clothes and go straight to the hospital,” she said.
Authorities advised Lynch to talk to the Kalamazoo College counseling center, but she chose not to. She just wanted to push through her last two months, she said.
Dr. Pat Ponto, director of the counseling center, said that in her 20 years working at K, she has seen about 10 students who said they had been sexually assaulted on study abroad.
“With the students I have known, they did not tell the college,” Ponto said. Some of the students were assaulted but not raped. Ponto suspected that students who were not raped might have chosen not to inform the college as a way to help them deal with their trauma.
Another student who was raped last year on study abroad in Nairobi, Kenya, and who wishes to be identified as Savanna, was dissatisfied with the CIP.
Savanna accepted an invitation to dinner and drinks with the host brother of another K student. There was attraction on both sides, but Savanna told him she did not want to sleep with him. He raped her anyway. She tried not to think about it while her mother visited. It wasn’t until another host brother assured her that wasn’t how all Kenyan men behaved that she reported it.
She and her Resident Director agreed that they would not tell the CIP, but Savanna’s Resident Director informed the college without telling her, she said. She was never contacted by the CIP or the counseling center, even though both knew her situation, she said.
“I was under the impression that if the CIP knew, they would’ve sent at least one email, to see if I was ok,” she said. Savanna also said she was not encouraged to get medical attention.
The CIP tells students to avoid excessive drinking during orientation. However, drinking is part of Kenyan culture, and Savanna trusted the group of host siblings who took her and her friends out.
Savanna and Lynch want a mandatory “Women and Study Abroad” panel.
Dr. Joe Brockington said the CIP will not comment on individual students’ cases. He also said that the CIP is hesitant to make “Women and Study Abroad” mandatory.
“Students, in general, are against mandatory anything…[and] if we make something mandatory, then there needs to be a consequence for not going,” he said.
According to Brockington, K programs discuss student safety at meeting including all the Resident Directors and much of the CIP staff every two years. The CIP relies on the Resident Directors to be knowledgeable about students’ legal rights, and to inform students of those rights on-site.
“We encourage them to put [that information] in the packet; it’s something we’ll take up…this summer,” he said.
“I don’t blame the CIP,” said Savanna. “I don’t know, if I would have heard [my] story, if it would have changed anything, but it would have been one more story in the back of my mind while I was making decisions.”