After spending years helping people recover from sexual violence as a clinical psychologist, Jennifer Messina '93 returned to campus in 2011 to help create the Dartmouth Bystander Initiative. The program, created specifically for Dartmouth students, aims to reduce sexual assault by teaching individuals to be proactive in prevention.
"We wanted to do something that was sustained and comprehensive," Messina said. "There is a real feeling that this is unique, that there is a real investment to build a program that is Dartmouth-specific."
Aurora Matzkin '97, director of health promotion and student wellness, worked closely with Messina to implement DBI last November and said the reliance on community members learn makes the program more effective.
"Bystander initiatives show promise for increasing safety on campus by empowering large numbers of the community to intervene in risky moments," she said in an email.
Focus groups found that the majority of students believe that no one deserves to be a victim of sexual violence, implying that students are already "allies that just aren't equipped with the skills to be positive bystanders," Messina said.
College President Phil Hanlon said he is energized about the way in which the College can reduce sexual violence, adding that sexual assault has been "a stubborn national problem" after numerous reduction approaches that appear intuitively effective, such as educating people about statistics of sexual assault incidents, are usually not as successful.
"There's been no indication of improvement over the last three decades in [the number of sexual assaults]," he said in an interview. "This is a huge national public health and personal safety problem for our nation."
DBI is educating students, faculty and staff on how to effectively respond when they see signs of potential sexual assault and to create conversations that show that sexual violence will not be tolerated at the College. Messina said she hopes these will help gradually shift the College's cultural norms.
"The ultimate goal, the reduction of violence, will take years, not weeks or months," she said.
Hanlon has emphasized a focus on research-based approaches, and said intervention-based programs such as DBI can have a significant impact on reducing assault.
"I'm really excited abut working with Jen to see what we can do in our campus, to put in place a model that is shown to work, to see if we can get that done and help our whole country try to deal with this," he said.
While said it is too early to see if DBI has been successful at reducing sexual assault, the high student involvement so far is a positive sign. Almost 700 students have attended a DBI overview talk and 96 percent said that they would tell their friends to attend a training session, Messina said. The training has seen 115 student participants, including many who had not previously been actively involved in reducing campus sexual violence.
"These were not people who knew they had a role to play," Messina said. "That we have a brand-new audience is very positive."
A number of campus organizations have had their members trained in bystander intervention, including Greek houses and Dartmouth Peak Performance. Matzkin hopes to eventually have 800 students complete DBI training.
Messina returned to the nonprofit Green Dot, where she is the director, after forming focus groups on campus that gathered student input and training staff members to help implement the program last year, said she is optimistic that DBI and other intervention-based approaches can have a positive impact on the College.
"All students that come after this can face lower levels of rape and violence than students across the country," she said. "It's a really exciting time because we have the potential to change the culture."
