“When there’s no sexual contact, people don’t necessarily think of sexual assault,” said Lindsey Daniels, who is the sexual assault prevention program coordinator for Tri-County Mental Health and Counseling.

Not all sex offenses involved physical contact. Several sex offenses defined in the Ohio Revised Code, such as public indecency and voyeurism, do not involve physical contact.

The misdemeanor-level offenses like public indecency, voyeurism, and sexual imposition (any unwanted sexual touching) get reported much less than forceful sex offenses like rape, but Amanda Childress, OU’s assistant director of health promotions, said they probably happen just as often.

“Very rarely do we have reports of public indecency because people think it’s funny, not a big deal, or they blow it off as a joke,” said Childress, whose office tracks the number of incidents of crimes on campus that are recorded in the yearly Clery Report. The Clery Act requires universities to make their crime reports public. Reports of voyeurism are also low, and Childress said there have been two this school year - one was a report of a student videotaping his roommate and a girl having sex, and another was a report of a male student looking under the stalls in the girls’ restrooms.

Do students feel violated by someone streaking at a football game, flashing their breasts or genitals uptown at Halloween, or masturbating in public? It may depend on the situation, but Childress said that if the person who witnesses it feels frightened, scared or embarrassed, it’s a form of sexual assault.

The OU Department of Health Promotion and student groups such as Promoting Ohio Wellness Education and Responsibility (POWER) work to educate students about sexual assault. One of the classes offered through the department is on the “sexual assault continuum,” to show students the variety of forms sexual assault takes.

“It’s great that people recognize what rape is, but the message has to be that not only is it not OK to rape, but it’s not OK to make sexist comments, it’s not OK to catcall,” Daniels said.

According to Daniels and Childress, perpetrators of rape usually go through a period of testing boundaries before working up to more serious offenses. If certain behaviors are acceptable in their surroundings, this provides reinforcement.

“When things are joked about or not taken seriously, obviously it sends a message,” Daniels said.

Childress said both male and female students are influenced by their peers in deciding what is acceptable and what isn’t.

“If someone in a room gropes you, if you feel uncomfortable and everybody else thinks it’s no big deal, you’re not likely to say anything,” Childress said. “And then if that’s no big deal, what’s to stop someone from holding you up against the wall and groping you?”

If potential perpetrators of rape were stopped in the “testing boundaries” stage, Childress said it would send a positive message.

“If they’re not dealt with in a responsible manner, people start thinking these behaviors are acceptable, both women and men,” Childress said. “We would rather see these offenses caught and prosecuted, even with a ’slap on the wrist,’ and have the behavior corrected at an earlier stage before offenses become much more serious. We’re not doing our job as educators if we’re not stopping these things early on.”