Post Deliberation Analysis

After being invited to Ben Thoma's deliberation event entitled 'Till it Happens to You this past Sunday, I began to analyze what I learned from the event. The entire talked revolved around sexual assault and how to mitigate the negative growing factors here on campus at Penn State. In addition, the reasons leading to underreporting of sexual assault were addressed and possible fixes were brainstormed. Overall, the entire deliberation event was informational, intriguing, and civil.

At the beginning of the meeting, we all went around and explained our own personal stake in the problem space. Personally, I do not know anyone that has experienced sexual assault on campus, but I was extremely interested in learning more so I would be better prepared in the future. Many people in the class help personal stakes in the matter and this made the conversation more diverse and informative. Also, everyone started off on the same page, admitting that sexual assault was a problem on campus and that solutions needed to be sought out.

Among the three approaches discussed, the two that stood out the most to me were security and community. The first portion of the conversation dealt with implementing blue light systems in more areas both on and off campus. I thought this idea would be a deterrent for some sexual assault scenarios, but on the whole, most sexual assaults do not happen in the open campus. Instead, they take place at parties or social gatherings where lots of people and alcohol is involved. Instead of increasing the blue light systems quantity, possible phone app ideas were tossed around as alternatives to help people contact the police faster. This was a good example of compromises and new information that can be obtained from a community discussion.

During the community approach, the tendency of victims to not report an assault was discussed. Most notably, people stated that victims feel guilty about the assault or fear they will be shamed because of their inability to stop it. To combat this, the discussion began to head towards the direction of roviding more education resources around the State College community about the dangers of sexual assault and the various ways to fight back. Early reporting is one of the best ways to get sexual assaulters off the streets and protect possible future victims.

At the end of the deliberation, it became very clear that we had evolved the conversation over to to address not only ways to prevent sexual assault, but ways to cope with it and gain justice. Although the situation is far from perfect, talks like these are what it takes to begin fixing the problem.