A Daily Evergreen investigation of 36 Pullman and WSU Police Department reports of sexual assault revealed certain trends in instances of reported sexual misconduct from 2008 to 2013.

As a disclaimer, these data are part of a sample and therefore reveal trends within a margin of error. However, the statistical rule of 30 to 35 in sample size would imply that these trends would hold with reasonable – though not certain – probability in the general population.

The data gathered are merely descriptive statistics and were not subjected to distributional or probability based tests.

It must also be noted that reported sexual assault cases are tempered by the fact that an overwhelming number of instances of sexual assault are never reported.

Moreover, rape constitutes only one form of sexual assault and misconduct, so not all reported instances of sexual assault constitute rape.

In the United States as a whole, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) reports that on average one in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lifetime.

According to the NSVRC, 46.4 percent of lesbians, 74.9 percent of bisexual women and 43.3 percent of heterosexual women reported sexual violence other than rape during their lifetimes, while 40.2 percent of gay men, 47.4 percent of bisexual men and 20.8 percent of heterosexual men reported sexual violence other than rape during their lifetimes.

For college and university populations in particular, one in five females and one in 16 males are sexually assaulted during their time at college or university. However, the NSVRC estimates that 90 percent of sexual assaults are not reported.

The Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs reports that 33 percent of women in the state have been sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime.

For the sample of WSU and the Pullman area, one of the sample sexual assault cases was not in fact a sexual assault. Rather, it was a 2011 arrest of a sex offender who failed to fulfill mandatory reporting. The remaining 35 cases were a mixture of reported rapes or otherwise forced sexual contact.

Of the 35 cases, 94 percent involved a female victim, and 100 percent involved a male assailant or assailants. For this study, whether or not multiple attackers perpetrated the assault was considered materially irrelevant.

In terms of location, 11 percent of reported assaults occurred in a Greek house, 8.6 percent in a bar and 28.6 percent in a residence hall. The specific name of each location was also deemed irrelevant for this study.

In total, only 34 percent of reported cases resulted in some sort of arrest. The reason for this is myriad. Among the reasons were lack of material evidence to confirm assault; the victim requested the case be dropped; or police could not refute or deny the presence of consent beyond a shadow of a doubt. The latter arose most commonly from the inability to establish true consent due to the consumption of alcohol.

A search of the Daily Evergreen’s website using the keyword “rape” reveals 10 reported instances of rape or sexual assault since Nov. 17, 2015, in Pullman.