Student leaders of two on-campus organizations, the Women’s Resource Center and Alpha Chi Omega, led a discussion Oct. 18 on the prevalence of rape culture in the modern era and how the student population at Loyola can work together to raise awareness and diminish rape culture as a whole.

Sequoya LaJoy, A’17, started the panel by discussing some of the preliminary research she conducted on sexual assault for her capstone project last year.

“Among undergraduate students, 23.1 percent of females and 5.4 percent of males will experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation,” LaJoy said in reference to the results from her senior research project.

Over half the participants in LaJoy’s preliminary research said they had received unsolicited sexual comments. Of these comments, “43.8 percent were made through unsolicited electronic communication and 33.6 percent were made through unwanted phone calls,” according to LaJoy.

During her research, LaJoy said some of the data she received from student respondents was “pretty alarming.”

“For example, 27.7 percent of students participating in the survey said that they had been followed or spied on,” LaJoy said.

When asked whether or not popular culture and media have shaped today’s rape culture, Daniel DeBarge, music industry junior and member of the Women’s Resource Advocacy Team, mentioned the role of movies and their way of reinforcing notions of toxic masculinity in the impressionable minds of young people.

“Historically, in movies, men are usually put into certain roles where their aggressiveness and their strength is emphasized and not their empathy or their sensitivity to other people’s feelings,” Derange said. “Roles like that put men at a disadvantage at a very young age because they inspire men to be aggressive. If men are not empathetic at young ages, it will be hard for them to adapt when they are older.”

Debarge also reinforced the importance of holding men accountable for their actions.

“The term ‘boys will be boys’ creates this idea that somehow abusing women, and also men, is somehow a biological trait that is instilled in most men,” Debarge said. This is obviously not true but instead, something that is taught and learned over time. And, what is taught and learned can be unlearned,” Debarge said.