The recent rebranding of Mentors Against Violence to Movement Against Violence, in addition to the upcoming introduction of the Center for Community Action and Prevention, shows the latest stages of the decades-long evolution of sexual assault prevention programming.
The Sexual Assault Awareness Program, Dartmouth’s official arm in combatting assault, oversees many programs that focus exclusively on sexual violence, like first responder training for professors, peer advising and the Dartmouth Bystander Initiative. Coordinators Rebekah Carrow and Amanda Childress facilitate the programs that fall under SAAP’s umbrella.
Alongside the College, students have helped develop sexual assault resources. MAV co-director Murylo Batista ’15 categorized students’ work into three areas: prevention, post-trauma and policy.
The distinction between these areas has allowed various groups to address sexual assault without much overlap, Batista said. MAV emphasizes prevention, Sexual Assault Peer Advisors handle post-trauma response and the Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault addresses policy.
SAAP oversees the peer advising program, but not the other two programs.
Movement Against Violence
MAV runs facilitations for student groups, aiming to teach students how to prevent sexual assault and dispel harmful social norms through facilitated discussions. The program is mostly directed at Greek houses, but it has recently expanded its reach to other campus groups.
MAV tailors each facilitation to best serve the needs of the participant group in question, Batista said. In fraternities, for example, MAV discusses the environment and behavior in fraternity basements.
Batista said that MAV has a pool of about 35 active members who facilitate sessions.
The recent name change was inspired by a reconsideration of the word “mentor,” Batista said. Because the facilitators follow a peer education model, they do not want participants to perceive facilitators as in positions of power as mentors.
The group, a little less than a decade old, was founded by students who perceived a need for enhanced education, support and prevention efforts because of insufficient College involvement in sexual assault issues at the time, former director Holli Weed ’14 said.
The group also possessed few administrative connections at its inception. While the group continues to be completely run by students, Childress serves as its advisor, Weed said.
Weed added that the current program also features greater student involvement, more efficient trainings and increased use of research from other universities.
But MAV’s curriculum and goals remain in flux as the issue of sexual assault develops on campus, she said.
MAV co-director Jill Horing ’15 said that the program’s goals have narrowed over the years, especially after the implementation of other programs like DBI. MAV no longer incorporates bystander intervention and now concentrates on education and prevention. The discussion-based sessions reinforce the idea that facilitators constitute a community of students speaking with other students, Horing said.
“We’re not just educating people,” she said. “We’re starting a conversation.”
MAV facilitator Kelsey Weimer ’16, trained last fall, said she was attracted to the program because she found that the facilitations employed a particularly interesting approach.
Interactive sessions, Weimer said, pose a series of questions to students. “Have you witnessed anything that makes you uncomfortable?” “How did your house handle that situation?”
Another activity prompts participants to discuss and arrange social situations on a continuum of violence. The events range from using “you guys” to address a group to stranger rape.
Sexual Assault Peer Advisors
SAPA trains students to provide support and resources for survivors of sexual violence, director of health promotion and student wellness Aurora Matzkin ’97 said. Matzkin, trained as a SAPA as a student at the College, said that the program is still being perfected.
Since the program’s creation in 1991, there has been an effort to emphasize continuing education for peer advisors even after their term-long training, Matzkin said, noting that she faced the same challenge after she had been trained.
“You did one term of training, and then you were anointed a SAPA, and there was no follow-up after that,” she said.
Now, students can take on leadership positions or plan events addressing assault. Some SAPAs also serve as MAVs or on the SPCSA, she said.
There have also been ongoing efforts to create more coordinated training for SAPAs, as students have felt “siloed” from the other peer advising peers like Eating Disorder Peer Advisors and Sexperts in the past, Matzkin said.
Alice Morrison ’14 said she decided to get trained as a SAPA her junior fall because she wanted to be more informed about sexual assault and “do justice” to friends who had chosen to come forward with their experiences.
“I felt like I was hurting the community by not being educated about the resources, about even how to respond to somebody coming to me as a friend saying, ‘This happened to me. I don’t know what to do. Am I okay? What happened?’”
Training, Morrison said, consisted of reading and discussing policy, role-playing scenarios, talking with organizations like Safety and Security and WISE and planning a SAAP event.
Following the term-long training, Morrison said, some members take on a more public role by planning events like Take Back the Night and Speak Out, while others choose to serve only as interpersonal resources.
Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault
SPCSA, established in 2010 under former College President Jim Yong Kim, is a student-run committee that plans and implements cross-campus initiatives related to sexual violence.
The committee collects and presents recommendations from different campus groups to administrators, faculty, staff, alumni and students. Recommendations already realized include the Safe Ride program, the Center for Community Action and Prevention and the addition of a second SAAP coordinator.
SPCSA vice chair Carla Yoon ’15 said members shaped DBI at its inception and encouraged other students to get involved following its implementation.
The SPCSA sponsors a mini-grant project, which supports student research on sexual assault. Under the two mini grants last term, Bridget Lynn ’15 researched peer advising groups at Dartmouth, while Silvia Arora ’16 investigated the College’s Committee of Standards process and judicial review processes at peer institutions.
The committee, Yoon said, hosts termly faculty dinners that bring professors together to discuss sexual assault and avenues for them to become involved with first responder training. The committee also holds a symposium every spring to collect community members’ feedback.
The committee receives its funding from the President’s Office, while the mini-grants are funded by the President’s Office and the Deans Office.
Weed said she worked with many campus groups in 2012 to unify efforts to combat sexual assault. Sexual violence prevention groups collaborated to enhance communication between various organizations.
Since then, Weed said that there has been less overlap between groups.
Women’s and gender studies professor Giavanna Munafo said that the large number of campus resources on sexual assault can create confusion.
“Options are not bad,” Munafo said. “I just think that, structurally, it’s not clear how they’re connected. Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?”
Eight of the 11 students interviewed by The Dartmouth expressed confusion over the distinctions between the three core student resources. Some students had not heard of the SPCSA or could not pinpoint the difference between the student groups.
Caleb Caldwell ’17 said that a clear delineation is not necessary because students involved with organizations can direct students to a better resource.
Pranav Vangala ’17 said he believes that the groups should be united under one umbrella. Anna Gabianelli ’16 disagreed but added that the specifics of each group often get lost in translation.
“I do think that the distinction is good because they all have different purposes,” Gabianelli said. “Everybody knows that there’s a huge amount of resources, but there’s so much overlap that people don’t know who does what.”
Batista, who is involved in all three groups, said that the groups are aware of this criticism but that if anyone takes the time to search their websites, the differences become obvious.
Sara McGahan and Sera Kwon contributed reporting.
