Gabe Oppenheim | If we don't hear of rape, is it not there?

That was the question posed by a headline in this newspaper three weeks ago. The accompanying article noted that seven forcible rapes had been reported on or near Penn's campus in 2005. A year earlier, only one had been reported.

But as the article made clear, most experts saw the rise as an increase in victims coming forward and not as an increase in the incidence of rape. So while slightly twisted, the headline begged a question Penn must confront.

Do six rapes constitute an improvement?

I'd answer yes and no - depending on where our University sets the bar. Because the truth is, Penn hasn't often confronted issues of sexual harassment.

It was only 20 years ago that Penn realized it had a problem. In September 1984, a University task force on misconduct conducted a campus-wide survey to measure harassment.

But before the task force could publish anything, it called for another study to be done - since there were too many victims unwilling to go on record.

So the University Council formed the Committee to Survey Harassment, which conducted anonymous studies of 4,500 people and released its landmark report, "Unwanted Attention," in December of 1985.

The report is heartbreaking.

It contains both numbers and narratives, with actual tales of harassment told by students, faculty and staff. And while some of its content may seem obvious today, much of it still shocks.

"An acquaintance was drinking," one undergraduate woman said. "He came to my room and wanted sex. I didn't. He was stronger. I was scared, and he forced himself on me."

The numbers told an equally disturbing story. Eighty-six graduate women reported harassment, with 59 of them implicating a faculty member. Overall, Penn faculty accounted for 130 incidents of harassment mentioned in the report.

And many victims felt they could do nothing in response. Of 12 female faculty members who officially reported their harassment to the school, "11 said their action made 'no difference.'"

Meanwhile, many undergraduates spoke of peer harassment and their subsequent fears of telling someone. Finally, the report estimated that, in any given year, 62 female undergraduates and 20 female graduate and professional students would experience actual or attempted rape or assault by a peer.

To be fair to Penn, many other schools had problems of the same magnitude. Harvard's 1983 report found that 73 percent of undergraduate women had been harassed by a peer.

But regardless, the wave of studies in the early '80s shed light on a phenomenon colleges should have expected: Communities of hormonal youth awash in alcohol and tenured professors in positions of power invite abuse.

Even after Penn released "Unwanted Attention," six years passed before another study was conducted. This time, The Daily Pennsylvanian took the initiative, polling more than 1,200 students and printing a week-long series of multi-page articles.

The series demonstrated that every new reported rape here constitutes both an improvement and a sad reflection of the status quo.

On the one hand, the DP showed that students were beginning to confront the issue. Eighty percent of junior and senior respondents said they would be more likely to believe a woman had been date-raped than they would have been as freshmen. And while only one student in the past three years had reported a rape to police, more than 60 victims of sexual assault had consulted campus groups.

But much had not changed in six years. A third of all senior respondents said they had been sexually assaulted, and many on campus still didn't care. One survey respondent said his sexual activity "could be interpreted as rape" because "at this school . people bitch about everything."

Today, Penn seems a less callous place. The Women's Center offers several programs for victims and the general public. Director Elaine DiLapi has done an amazing job there since her hiring in 1985, before the release of "Unwanted Attention."

And yet, in the two decades since, we've come to call each new reported case an improvement. Which may be accurate in the most immediate sense, but less so in the larger picture.

For with only seven people coming forward to report rape, who would doubt there are those who fearfully remain silent? Not that a silver lining can't be found here, too.

After all, with fewer reports comes less bitching.

Gabe Oppenheim is a College sophomore from Scarsdale, N.Y. His e-mail address is oppenheim@dailypennsylvanian.com. Opp-Ed appears on Wednesdays.

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