University of Montana President addresses Board of Regents on sexual assaults

The state Board of Regents said they will begin working on a new approach to handling sexual assaults across the Montana University System during a meeting on Thursday. University of Montana President Royce Engstrom took questions from the Board regarding a series of sexual assaults of students that have recently come to light.  The board hopes some good can come from the situation.

President Engstrom started a presentation to the regents by reflecting on a public meeting on the alleged assault cases held earlier this week.

“The community forum the other night was probably the most challenging thing that I’ve done in my professional career,” Engstrom said, adding this was not due to the nature of the audience. The crowd of about 125 was respectful and largely constructive.

“But the topic of discussion was clearly among the most serious topics that any of us can deal with,” Engstrom said. “And it gave us all at the University and continues to give us great pain that this is an issue that we are confronting.”

The alleged sexual assaults of two UM students were reported in December. Since then other women have come forward reporting alleged assaults. President Engstrom has put forth a list of five actions he is directing the University to take. It includes the likes of pursuing an aggressive and rapid investigation into the assaults and launching a much bigger education effort on campus.

The regents commended President Engstrom on his handling of the matter. Student Regent Joseph Thiel says this is not just a problem facing the University of Montana.

“I’d encourage campuses to be more proactive about starting conversations on their own campuses with similar public forums so that we can try and talk about this on a broader base,” he said.

The other regents agreed, saying lessons needed to be learned across the state. Higher Education Commissioner Shiela Stearns said proactive education efforts over the past few decades have tackled other problems, such as student tobacco use.

“We can make a system we can perhaps now turn this to a real positive, President Engstrom, and lead the way in a real systemic, long-term approach,” Stearns said.

University of Montana student president Jenifer Gursky said doing something about sexual abuse on campus cannot be approached lightly and must involve students.

“I don’t know how much more passion I can say this with but reports, meetings, committees, discussions void of student input will not have long-lasting results,” Gursky said.

President Engstrom wanted to assure the Board of Regents he knows incidents like this can not only seriously damage individuals, but his entire institution.

“One, we are gonna do the right thing, we’re gonna get at the truth and we are gonna be as open as we possibly can be about this,” Engstrom said. “The damage done to institutions usually is not from the incident itself but how the institution has handled that incident.”

The Board of Regents will hear ideas for system wide changes to campus sexual assault policies during their March meeting.

 

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