As part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month and the National Week of Student Action, Amnesty International hosted the first Stop Violence Against Women panel last night.

The panel, which included six campus and community activists, discussed the prevention as well as the repercussions of sexual assault in today's society. "One hundred and six rapes were reported on campus last year, and it is estimated that only 10 percent of rapes are reported," Scott Kiefer, co-president of Men Against Violence, said. "If that's true, that means about 1,000 rapes occurred last year at Penn State."

Deirdri Fishel, a State College Police Department detective, said 95 percent of sexual assault victims are women.

"Most rapists are men, but most men are not rapists," Kiefer said. "Men are the problem, but men are also the solution."

Corey Cook, advocacy and education chair at the Centre County Women's Resource Center, said society is now adopting the "radical notion" that men should be held accountable.

When men domestically abused their wives in the '70s and '80s, "officers used to tell husbands to take a walk around the block to cool off while his wife was taken to the hospital," Fishel said.

Fishel said women should be treated as humans, not property. "This is 2006, and we're still giving brides away, symbolically, to their husband," she said.

The panel also discussed the investigation involving Duke University's men's lacrosse team. The scandal involved allegations that three players raped a stripper at a party. "I think that if this happened at Penn State, we would have had a more delayed response," Kiefer said. "I'm impressed by Duke's reaction. The head of Duke stepped up within a day or two and said, 'You know what, lacrosse is over until we figure this out.' "

Recent controversies over Megan's Law, which requires sex offenders to register on a national database, also were addressed. "The average rapist commits 11 to 14 rapes in his lifetime," Kiefer said. "You can understand why we want offenders to register."

Brett Bergen (freshman-finance and industrial/organizational psychology) said he thought a culture promoting "unemotional, macho males" could be a problem. Kiefer said this may be fixed if people stop buying music and watching TV shows that objectify women.

Cook said abuse is a continuum, and prevention needs to start by letting men know it's not OK to harass women at any level. "We want people's reactions to be, 'He smacked his wife? What's wrong with him?' instead of 'He smacked his wife? Why, what did she do?' " Fishel said.