The Avon Foundation For Women is taking their “Speak Out Against Domestic Violence” program a step further by focusing on sexual assaults on college campuses.
The effort is needed as one in 5 women and one in 16 men are sexually assaulted while in college, yet more than 90% of sexual assault victims on college campuses do not report the assault, according to statistics by the National Sexual Violence Center. Additionally, 63.3% of men at one university who self-reported acts qualifying as rape or attempted rape admitted to committing repeat rapes.
“Over the past six years, we have been supporting initiatives, a lot of engagement programs, and small student leadership groups to do things like to do a bystander campaign so that when students see something happening that they may suspect or know that something wrong is happening, to engage them in a safe way to intervene to stop the violence before it occurs,” explained Christine Jaworsky, the program director for the Avon Foundation for Women. “And now we want to take it a step further.”
On December 1st, the foundation announced the launch of the first multi-disciplinary collaborative of 20 colleges and universities across the country dedicated to addressing gender-based violence on campus.
“There are so many people that say to even have the name of a major global corporate brand who even will want to talk about rape and violence against women, and who even wants to bring attention to it, it’s huge because it brings a lot of legitimacy to it,” Jaworsky told DIVERGE. “I think what we are also hoping is that others will want to become engaged and say this is something we need to have an impact on.”
The collaboration, which is an outcome of The National Leadership Institute: Changing the Narrative on Campus Gender-Based Violence presented by Futures Without Violence, a national health and social justice nonprofit, in partnership with the Gender Violence Program at Harvard Law School and the University of Virginia, brought together representatives from 20 schools to participate in a two-day program that dialogues around key learnings from across the country to prevent campus assault and sexual violence.
One program was hosted on October 25 – 26, 2016 in Boston at Emerson College and included students and faculty from Brandeis University, Dean College, Eastern Nazarene College, Lasell College, Lesley University, Providence College, Stonehill College, University of Massachusetts, and Lowell Wheaton College.
The second program was held November 30 – December 1, 2016 in Atlanta at Morehouse College, with Benedict College, Clemson University, College of Charleston, East Tennessee State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State University, Middle Tennessee State University, Morehouse College, Tuskegee University and University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
According to Jaworsky, the schools were determined after a rigorous process to determine which geographical areas needed the most help first. Each participating school that attended the program will create a campus action plan that takes a trauma-based approach and involves students, college administration, campus police and leading consultants on gender-based violence.
The program provides colleges and universities the opportunity to learn best practices in the prevention, response and resolution of sexual violence, and the tools needed to implement action plans. Each school’s action plan will address prevention education; accommodations, support and safety services; retaliation; and investigations, adjudications and resolutions.
This will include webinars with experts, ongoing consultations, toolkits and additional online resources to advance the learning collaborative.
Kamilah Willingham, who was featured in the 2015 campus sexual assault documentary The Hunting Ground in which she told her story of surviving sexual assault while studying at Harvard Law School, heard about the program from one of her former professors at Harvard and came on board as faculty for the program.
“As somebody who has been on the other side of the process when the school is getting it wrong and doesn’t seem to have a great interest or desire to do better by their students, I can say that I wholeheartedly believe in the importance of this work and anything I can do personally to help ensure that victims of sexual violence don’t go through what I went through, I will,” said Willingham.
“These institutes are really the beginning of our work and we are in it to see successes going forward, although each school will define success differently,” Jaworksky added. “We have assembled a team of national leaders who seem committed to this change so we will continue to keep going.”
