Hola readers – this is Renée, the newest SAFER blogger. I’ve been interning with SAFER since June, but this is my first shot at writing for our blog. Below is the first piece in a series I’m developing for the Info Shop on campus programming campaigns, and this week we’re kicking off with a Student Awareness Campaign! (I swear it’s not as vague as it sounds.)

As I sat down to write the following article, the first thing I thought about was the dozens of other things I had to do. Not that I found this unimportant, but as a student, seemingly everything we have to do is important. In any given week we tackle classes, jobs, clubs, internships, volunteerism, the all-important social life, of course eating and maybe, if we’re lucky, sleeping more than 5 hours per night. So who has time for “activism,” this thing that requires not only action, but sustained, collective, and strategic action? What the most salted activists will tell you is that if you let the concept get too daunting and overwhelming, it gets that much harder to act. So the following is a briefing on the Student Awareness Campaign, an umbrella term for a collection of relatively short-term and simple efforts you can implement on your campus to bring awareness, attention, and momentum to your issue.

Your Student Awareness Campaign: What Are We Bringing Awareness To?

Once you have your core group of activists together and ready to plan and implement a Student Awareness Campaign, the first question to answer is, “What are we bringing awareness to?” It may seem obvious – you want to bring awareness to sexual assault on campus – but in order to make your campaign more effective and manageable, this answer needs to be more specific. Mainly:

A. Are we trying to bring awareness to the campus sexual assault policy?

If your policy is already spectacular, you may want to let the campus community know about the policy: some specifics about how it works or the programs it outlines, for instance.  Awareness of the existing policy will help make it more effective.

Unfortunately, and more likely, you may recognize that your college or university might need a partial or complete policy reform. This is a huge task to take on, but it can be accomplished!  We understand, this reform takes a lot of time and effort, and there are many students who do want to be active in the reform process but just cannot commit to what may be two years of intense involvement. So, bringing awareness to your policy can be done without taking on the challenge of reform immediately. This type of Student Awareness Campaign will also help immensely when you and your fellow activists are ready to take on reform – you will already have the campus talking about the issue and will probably have roused enough student interest to have strong and collective campus support.

B. Are we trying to bring awareness to prevention efforts on campus? Continue Reading »

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM), and many colleges and organizations are honoring it in creative and thought-provoking ways. Here are just a few:

The very thought of walking in high heels makes me feel nauseous, so I salute the 161 men who decided to Walk a Mile in Her Shoes. It’s not particularly common to see men rallying for women’s rights, so seeing them doing just that while decked out in heels is always uplifting.

Another article spoke about students at the College of William and Mary honored SAAM with their “Consent is Sexy” week, hanging a large banner with anonymous messages from students.  Called the Hope Wall, messages included “Change can happen,” and “Move from surviving to thriving.”

Ithaca College held a discussion panel to publicize changes made to their sexual assault policy. It’s great to read about some of the reforms that are being made just in time for this month, including minimum sanctions for specific offenses and the creation of more specific sexual assault terms; both necessary in helping to lessen the chance of a case being thrown out for lack of consensus.

Continue Reading »

Dan Wald, Ithaca College

The following is an interview with Dan Wald, a student activist at Ithaca College in New York. Dan contacted SAFER in the fall of 2006 for a copy of our guide for students, Change Happens. We’ve been happily tracking what he and his allies, the Ithaca College Feminists, have accomplished ever since. Dan’s campus group is called SAFER-Ithaca, although we have no formal affiliation with his organization. For Reproductive Justice Action Week we asked him to talk to us about his work at Ithaca and how the idea that reproductive justice includes freedom from sexual violence can help students on his campus.

What are you trying to accomplish at Ithaca?

I am trying to create a survivor friendly campus at Ithaca College. I am trying to do this by acting proactively to end rape and rape culture by spreading awareness/education through my organization and working with the college in changing policy. A majority of survivors of violence in college do not pursue justice, not because they can’t, but because we live in a culture that blames the person. We need to support survivors and I will do all in my power to make sure that happens even after I leave.

I have created a list of steps that need to be achieved to reach this status. These include changing judicial policy (re-education, minimum sanctions, survivor right to appeal, mixed student/faculty review board), education of students, RA/RD, and staff/faculty, resources in bathroom stalls, website with all resources/policies/myth vs fact/statistics, and more.

How did you get started?

I’d like to think I always felt what I feel now in regards to justice and equality for all. It took hearing the stories of survivors and a male speaker to give me the push I needed to start an organization my sophomore year called Men Against Rape Society. I had heard Keith Edwards “She Fears You” presentation and felt empowered. I had wanted to start an organization freshmen year but was discouraged by a prominent student body member who told me to focus my energy elsewhere. But since I started in the Fall of 2006, I have not stopped and never will.
Continue Reading »

SAFER Ithaca (who has no affiliation with us) and the Ithaca College Feminists have been successful in getting Ithaca College to review its sexual assault policy! You may remember Ithaca College (of smoking pot is worse than sexual assault fame). One of the first things agreed upon for the new policy is that there will be a zero-tolerance policy for RAs found to have committed sexual assault.

They are also working on revising the disciplinary hearing process and the student code of conduct. Their final proposals will be released in May and will eventually go to the Board of Trustees for approval.

The most impressive thing about these students is their clear desire to have process be responsive to the campus community. This article is reporting on a community meeting to share the working group’s thinking while it was still in process. As student member Sarah Brylinsky said, “We wanted to get feedback before we had solidified too much ourselves.” Brylinksy also stressed the group’s very open-ended process, starting from campus concerns and trying to work towards policies that would address those concerns rather than beginning with policies they would like to see put into place.

Look for an interview with SAFER Ithaca President Dan Wald later this month!

Sexual Assault Awareness Month news keeps rolling in. Take a look at these programs developed by committed students and staff.

University of Delaware’s month long programming starts from the premise

the month’s activities show the diverse issues and groups that sexual assault touches. “Sexual assault knows no gender, no age, no race or ethnicity, no class, no sexual preference,” she said. “It really is a crime that impacts all, and, unfortunately, occurs around the globe.”

Universities in Oklahoma are getting their first sexual and domestic violence prevention programs – University of Central Oklahoma, Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Northwestern Oklahoma State University in Alva, Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford and East Central University in Ada are sharing a $1 million grant to begin the program. Seems like a little, awfully late, but I’m thrilled to hear that students in Oklahoma will have a new option for information and assistance.
Continue Reading »

The Ithacan has published a number of letters to the editor, including one from the administrator who implied that smoking pot was a more serious offense than rape. She clarifies that this is not the case at IC, although I hope she’ll forgive me in wanting to see some substantial changes in the sexual assault policy and its implementation before I’m convinced. I’m glad that so much discussion and push for change is arising on campus – there are a lot of letters to the editor on the subject.