Activists, federal employees and leaders from various universities will gather on campus this summer for a national conference on sexual assault. The four-day conference, a follow-up to a February event hosted by the University of Virginia, will occur from July 14 to 17. Registration opened Thursday.
The first half of the conference will include educational sessions, speakers and other informative events, and the second half will center on working groups consisting of sexual assault advocacy experts, federal government officials and researchers, as well as other invited attendees of the conference, associate Dean of the College Elizabeth Agosto, who is coordinating the conference, said.
Although space limitations will cap several events at 300 attendees, the sessions in larger venues will be open to anyone on campus, Agosto said. Working groups of around 15 people will focus on one subtopic, which may include prevention, legal issues and other matters discussed at the beginning of the conference.
These groups will collaborate after the conference, Agosto said, working to make tangible products like reports of their discussions and sets of recommendations.
The conference follows a model designed by forensic expert David Lisak, who has consulted universities nationwide on the issue of sexual violence. Lisak said his work with several institutions indicated the need for a conference where universities could collaborate.
“It just struck me as sort of absurd that every individual university is struggling with the same problems, the same issues,” Lisak said. “It would make a lot more sense to bring people together and have them work collaboratively to try to solve these problems.”
Lisak said he had searched for a university to host the conference for two years. Though many university administrators were enthusiastic about the idea, he said, Dean of the College Charlotte Johnson was the first administrator contacted who was willing to have her institution sponsor the event.
The conference will cost $100,000, and Agosto said that about 90 percent of expenses will be covered by $300-per-person registration fees.
Agosto said that Johnson and College President Phil Hanlon are both excited about the conference and decided to invest the time and resources into hosting.
“The reality of solving any complicated problem is that the solutions themselves, when it comes down to actually implementing them, tend to be complex,” Lisak said. “Somebody’s got to do the hard work of wading through those complexities and identifying solutions that will actually work.”
Agosto said she expects the conference’s first sessions to fill to capacity, adding she has received regular inquiries into the conference since the Virginia conference.
Agosto anticipates working with Lisak at the College, she said.
“Dartmouth has work to do, but we’re really trying to do the very best we can to move this issue forward,” she said.
Organizers are working to engage students and hope that those who are on campus will attend the conference’s open events, Agosto said.
Murylo Batista ’15, who co-directs Movement Against Violence, said that the conference will allow Dartmouth to learn from other schools as well as give other institutions the chance to see the College’s tactics.
“I think this is an opportunity for us, and people have been working really hard to showcase the progress that we’ve made,” Batista said.
The Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault will form a planning group for the conference that will include committee members as well as members of MAV and other campus groups, Batista said.
A conference schedule and other updates will be posted online over the next few weeks, Agosto said.
The article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction appended: May 8, 2014
The SPCSA will form the planning group for the summer conference, and students across campus will sit on the committee, not just members of SPCSA, MAV and sexual assault peer advisors. The article has been corrected.
