Abstract
This research seeks to identify the factors that encourage or discourage both student sexual violence activism and the campus rape culture, as well as offer best practices for university response. By both examining the historical context of sexual violence activism and using Brandeis University as a case study for the application of these best practices, it can be concluded that one of the most advisable of these practices is the careful and deliberate establishment of a campus rape crisis center, among other pointed prevention and response efforts. Additionally, institutional support of student activism is a best practice that is vital to creating any long-term community change in both attitudes towards sexual violence and its actual prevalence on the college campus. Sexual violence on college campuses might be framed by the media as a revolutionary epidemic sweeping the nation only in the past few years, but in fact these issues are age old and sit squarely in a historical context of institutionalized misogyny, classism, racism and patriarchy. By exploring this context and how sexual violence within a university community might fit into such a history, this research also seeks to provide background for eventual social change through better resources and policies for the American college campus.