College Faculty Experiences With Student Disclosures of Victimization

Victimization of college students is widespread, and it is not uncommon for students to disclose these experiences to faculty. Given that how faculty respond to disclosures may have implications for students’ psychosocial and academic outcomes, it is key to know more about disclosures to help faculty prepare a supportive response. This study used data from an online survey of members of two U.S.-based professional scholarly associations for criminal justice and criminology ( N = 637) to look at the nature of student disclosure of victimization and which faculty are more likely to receive such disclosures. Disclosure to faculty was widespread (87% of faculty had received at least one disclosure of victimization from a student), and disclosures were mostly made in person. Over half the time (52.3%), participants thought the disclosure was prompted by an incident in class or another aspect of the course, and more than a quarter of the time (28.8%), the disclosure came from a student in a course that utilized trigger warnings. A faculty member’s individual identities, such as gender or race and ethnicity, did not appear to render them more or less likely to receive student disclosures. However, faculty with victimization experiences who had links to victim services organizations, who were teaching in a Sociology department, or who had been teaching longer were more likely to have received a disclosure. Graduate student instructors were less likely to have received a disclosure, even controlling for years of teaching. This suggests widespread training of college-level instructors in how to respond to a student’s disclosure of victimization may be warranted, at least for faculty teaching courses focusing on criminology and criminal justice.