A club for men, tackling sexual assault

There's a new all-guys club at Penn, but it's not another frat.

These guys want to talk sexual assault, and how to help its victims.

Twelve students from Penn and Drexel University this semester started up the West Philadelphia chapter of 1in4, an all-male peer-education group that focuses on teaching college men about sexual violence.

The group gets its name from a statistic - group members say that one in four college women have been the victim a rape or an attempted rape.

The group meets once a week, and, starting next semester, members plan to give presentations to all-male audiences such as fraternities about sexual assault and helping its victims.

But 1in4's approach is different from that of other groups in that it focuses on educating males on sexual abuse and how to help victims, rather than pointing a finger at men and just telling them not to do it, organizers say.

"We're assuming you do not want to rape people - instead, we're showing you how to help a survivor after he or she has been raped," said the group's president, College senior Famid Sinha.

Nationally, 1in4 has chapters on 25 campuses.

Rape reports have increased at Penn in recent years, while studies show that sexual assault has fallen 69 percent nationwide since 1993, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

Seven forcible rapes were reported on or near Penn's campus in 2005, compared to one in 2004. But public-safety officials have said that this may reflect an increase in reporting by victims, not a jump in actual crime.

For about the past 10 years, a different group, Students Together Against Acquaintance Rape, has addressed the issue of sexual assault at Penn, Director of Health Education Susan Villari said.

But that group disbanded last year, leaving a need for another group in that role, Villari said.

College junior Nick Roosevelt says he got the idea to found the Penn chapter while researching sexual-assault groups for a project for his "Leadership in Community Service" class. He was impressed with how effective 1in4 was on other campuses and thought it would succeed here as well because of its all-male, non-accusatory approach.

"The majority of the time, having that atmosphere of an all-male audience will let guys feel more comfortable opening up about the issue," Roosevelt said.

That approach may be the right kind of thinking to help curb sexual assault on campuses, says Darcey West of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

"The only way we're ever going to increase the number of sexual assaults that are reported is [by making] people comfortable about talking about it and taking it seriously," West said.

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