Campus releases latest Sexual Assault and Related Harms Survey results

The CU Boulder Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance (OIEC) released results from the 2024 Sexual Assault and Related Harms Survey in April. OIEC surveyed all students last fall, with 28% of undergraduate students and 29% of graduate students responding. This is the third time the OIEC has conducted the survey, the first two being in 2015 and 2021. Five main categories were measured: sexual assault, sexual exploitation, stalking, intimate partner abuse and sexual harassment.

While a few of the main categories saw rates increase slightly from 2021 to 2024, the rates for four of the five remained significantly lower than in 2015. The slight increases from 2021 were not unexpected given multiple factors, most notably the COVID-19 pandemic. Data shows that the pandemic-related factors, such as campuses going remote, stay-at-home orders and general trends toward less socialization, contributed significantly to the large decreases in rates seen in the 2021 survey. 

Compared to AAU peer institutions that collected data pre- and post-pandemic, CU Boulder saw lower rates of sexual assault and a larger decrease since before the pandemic. AAU peer institutions saw pre-pandemic rates of sexual assault for women decrease from 32% before the pandemic to 24% in 2024, compared to CU Boulder’s decline from 28% pre-pandemic to 18% in 2024. For CU Boulder, that means the campus saw a 36% reduction in sexual assault rates for undergraduate women from 2015 to 2024, compared to a 25% reduction among AAU peers.

Read more in CU Boulder Today.