SLIPPERY ROCK — Last week, President Barack Obama launched a new public awareness campaign to reduce campus sexual assaults.

This comes after a White House report earlier this year that stated that one in five women in the U.S. have been sexually assaulted at college, but only 12 percent of student victims report it.

At Slippery Rock University, there was one reported sexual assault in 2013. That was down from four reported assaults in 2012. SRU has 8,495 students.

What is the student view of sexual assaults at Slippery Rock University?

For the most part, they said that sexual assaults are a problem in their age group, but assaults are not a major problem on campus.

That seems to be a general opinion from a number of SRU students the Butler Eagle talked to this week.

“I think it’s something that’s pretty disgusting,” said Tanner Geibel, a sophomore from Butler.

He said he has not seen any sexual assaults on campus, and he has not known anyone who has been assaulted.

“You hear about it a lot,” Geibel said.

He said that SRU has a lot of programs to educate students and to prevent sexual assault.

“There’s a lot of education that they do,” Geibel said.

SRU is required by state and federal law to provide education on sexual assault to incoming students.

Part of this education includes SRU’s women’s center sending a link to an online program to students before they come to campus. The center then follows up by having representatives go into classes to discuss the issue and also to hold campus programs dealing with it.

A new program this year is called “Consent 101,” where issues of sexual consent are discussed, including consent complications due to intoxication.

Taylor Rafferty, a freshman from Ohio, said she feels safe on campus, and said SRU generally does enough to educate students about the issue. She also said that it is not a big problem on campus.

“Not that I’ve seen,” Rafferty said.

Leah Marcone, a sophomore from Monroeville, said she has not heard much about assaults on campus.

“I haven’t really run into it too much,” Marcone said.

Rebecca Thomas, a sophomore from Pittsburgh, said SRU has a lot of programs related to sexual assault, particularly for freshmen. She said she feels safe, noting the police call boxes that are all around the campus.

Mayron Veiga, a junior international student from Brazil, said sexual assaults are a problem, but likely not on campus.

“I would believe it is off campus,” Veiga said, particularly at night.

He said he recently spoke to a student from Sweden. That student said sexual assault is more common in Sweden, but Swedish campuses she has seen do not have police help call boxes like SRU does.

Jodi Solito, director of the women’s center, said despite what some students might think, sexual assault is a big issue.

She said a main reason that students may not consider it to be a major problem is that it is a highly unreported crime and, unlike many other crimes, does not have any witnesses.

“People don’t see it,” Solito said.

Underreporting of these crimes is extremely common, Solito said, because victims can feel blamed for assaults, assaults may be perpetrated by friends or family members, and going through the criminal justice system can be stressful.

She said that there are two areas on campus where the employees are considered “confidential reporters,” who are not required to report sexual assaults by name. These are the student health center and the women’s center.

She said she has heard of assaults happening both on and off campus, but she said she has heard of more assaults happening off campus. She said this likely is due to off-campus parties.

Richelle Ayers, a freshman from Erie County, said sexual assaults on college campuses are not as common as some think.

“I think it happens, but not to the degree that people say,” Ayers said.

She said SRU does a lot of programs, but she said the sessions made men out to be people who only are looking to sexually assault women.

“That’s not the way guys are,” said Ayers, who noted that women also can be perpetrators.

Solito said that she has heard people say that the presentations can be biased in that way.

She said statistics show that most perpetrators are men. However, the seminars also share the statistic that the majority of men are not perpetrators.

“We try to emphasize that as well,” Solito said.

She said the center wants to have more men involved, but she said culturally it is hard to get young men to step forward and be active with issues that are considered women’s issues.

Katie Hill, president of SRU’s student government association, said she agrees that assaults are a problem for college students. However, she noted that SRU has several prevention programs, and the university consistently is ranked as a safe campus.

“It may be an underreported crime, but either way, national polls have ranked us as one of the safest campuses,” Hill said.

Kevin Squires, editor in chief of the Rocket student newspaper, also said assaults are a problem in general. He said SRU does have several education programs, but he would like to see more open discussions about assaults.

“I think that there’s always more that they could be doing,” Squires said.

He said he has heard reports about campus assaults in the past.

“There really hasn’t been too much talk of it lately,” Squires said.