Limitations

Sexual Violence is not held within the vacuum of university life. Factors outside of Ohio State play a large part in what the university has to address in their programming and priorities.

Ohio State is inherently constrained as a public university
Universities such as Ohio State that are funded by federal funds, donors, and sponsors must account for many different stakeholders. These stakeholders' immediate prerogatives may not be in complete alignment with student and survivor activists’ needs. When anti-rape crisis centers were run primarily by grass-roots organizations such as Women Against Rape in the 1970s-1990s, the stakeholders shared more equitable power with one another because it was largely a community volunteer organization. However, the downside to grassroots organizing for issues as traumatic as anti-rape activism is that there was a constant need for more volunteers and funds due to burnout and demand for services. When rape crisis centers and other survivor support services became more institutionalized, they gained access to more stable funding and staffing, but this came at the price of autonomy over political activism and resource allocation.
Shame and the stigma of sex
While neither explicitly states as one of the barriers to their work, both Lewie and Pierano’s interviews speak on the power of shame that surrounds not only survivors speaking up but also sex in general. Lewie mentions how she “really didn’t have a lot of experience talking about sex, and most of us also came from abstinence-only education.” Pierano stated that if she had knowledge of the resources available now, she believes “there would have been less self-blame, victim-blaming but, again, we [Pierano & undergraduate peers] weren’t really having those discussions.” While these topics remain somewhat taboo, both observed that they have noticed students in the later 2010s being more open to discussing them, especially after specific cultural instances such as the “Dear Colleague Letter” and the #MeToo Movement.