In the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing with you a series of interviews with college students who successfully changed their school’s sexual assault policies and programs. I hope you’ll be as inspired and encouraged as we have been by the dedicated students we meet.

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Margaret Schuster went to St. Mary’s College of Maryland and received a Bachelor of Arts in History and English with a minor in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in May 2008. She is currently a first year law student at University of Maryland at Baltimore with the hope to receive the Juris Doctor degree in May 2011.

How did you get involved in challenging how your school handles sexual assault?

Initially, a group of senior students organized some of us younger ones – I was a freshie at the time – in response to a horrifically violent crime on our campus in which a girl was badly physically assaulted. Also, there had been a lot of recent incidents regarding race on our campus at the same time. We felt the administration was responding poorly and thus started compiling a large document listing all the things we saw as wrong in how our school administration handled incidents, in which we included sexual assault, and what we wanted done to fix these issues. We called a very public town hall meeting in our campus center. About 400-500 people including major administration officials like our President and Dean were in attendance as we spoke about how we came and spoke on good faith that we had a good community that was going astray and needed to be led in the right direction again. Since graduation was around the corner, these seniors asked three other students and myself to carry on and make sure that a lot of these changes went through.

How did you get other students involved?

The true activist students easily got involved. The problem was keeping them involved amidst busy academic and personal schedules. It was easy to reignite the passion once the Dean of Students said some inflammatory comments quoted in our school newspaper just before winter break of 2005 commenced – particularly implying that women lie about rape on campus. This was enough to get students to meet over break to set up a battle plan for the Spring 2006 semester, including a set of priorities like rewriting the policy to include a definition of active consent, a clearer judicial policy, and an administration position to handle organizing the communication of all offices in response to one incident.

What were the biggest concerns about your school and sexual assault among students on your campus?

We felt the policy did not include an active definition of consent. Also we felt the judicial policies were not clear enough to be followed as consistently as they should be by the various administration offices involved in an incident – i.e. residence life, public safety, judicial board, health and counseling. We also felt, with the help of Tiffany Turbin [another St. Mary’s activist] and her experience as a domestic violence advocate the previous summer, that we needed peer advocates to assist survivors in navigating their options in an empowering manner. Being sent from office to office is annoying enough when you just want some forms completed, but for a recent survivor of sexual assault this could be harrowing. We wanted to have people who knew the routes to take and could lead the survivor down the path the survivor wanted the most, thus empowering the survivor instead of intimidating her or him.

How did your administration respond?

The President of our college, Jane Margaret O’Brien (Maggie for short), scheduled weekly meetings with myself and Tiffany as well as the head of judicial services Jeff Orzolek, Student Government Association President Christopher Van Sickle and Vice President Sarah Pernick. Honestly, I found these meetings to be a waste of my time, but I persisted to remain in Maggie’s good graces so she would approve the changes the Sexual Assault Task Force would propose. Meanwhile, Tiffany and I also proposed our draft to that Sexual Assault Task Force who received the changes kindly and implemented our definition of consent word for word for Maggie at the end of the semester.

How did you pressure them into meeting your demands?

I just stuck it out with wherever Maggie’s whims directed me. I whole heartedly agreed when she said she’d foot the bill for an external review committee. We had professors recommend people they thought would be good. The report we later received agreed with our draft completely. I think this gave Maggie a push to accept all of the Sexual Assault Task Force’s recommendations. The Sexual Assault Task Force was kindly to us because it was compiled of professors and staff members who personally thought kindly of Tiffany and myself. They were impressed by our draft and our presentations and our willpower to stick this out. I think if we had not had so many friendly faces on the Task Force, this change would’ve been more of an uphill battle than it already was.

Describe your successes.

They can be seen in the St. Mary’s College of Maryland Handbook To the Point.

Look for our sexual assault section of the handbook.

Also, the school hired full time a health educator who also handles organizing responses to sexual assault incidents (including using students as peer advocates) and preventative education. Her name is Candace Daniels and can be reached at cidaniels [at] smcm [dot] edu.

What resources (on- and off-campus) were most useful to you in your campaign?

Tiffany pulled from her Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault (MCASA) documents for Maryland’s statute. Also, we pulled from Antioch’s famous sexual assault policy including consent. Also, the external review committee had access to things we did not.

What advice would you give to other students who want to change their campuses?

Be persistent. Also, know when to be political and appease authority figures so they’ll be more kindly to your recommendations. Have a set list of priorities with an extensive amount of research to back up your claims. Also know when to be forceful when you think no one is listening to your demands. Just never give up. And be ready for not all your demands to be met and needing to pass on issues to younger students who can carry it on when you’ve graduated.

What, if anything, would you have done differently?

I would’ve been more forceful on the education issue. I felt not enough was gained on that front. Not enough publication on our consent policy had or has happened, so very few know about it unless they take the time to read the handbook, which few do.