The Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault published its 2014 recommendations Friday morning, calling for the College to release more comprehensive data on sexual violence, support Greek organizations that wish to become co-ed and ban Bored at Baker, among other suggestions. The 21 recommendations cover prevention, education about and response to sexual violence.
In its report, the committee asked the office of institutional research and office of student health promotion and wellness, among others, to release raw data on sexual violence at Dartmouth, including the type and location of offenses. The committee also recommended that the College partner with students when developing programs, suggesting that campaigns such as the Dartmouth Bystander Initiative will not be successful unless they reflect Dartmouth’s culture and incorporate student input.
This year, the committee considered how campus structures, including the Greek system, may contribute to the prevalence of sexual violwence, SPCSA vice chair Carla Yoon ’15 said.
In previous years, SPCSA’s main recommendation was a zero-tolerance policy on sexual assault, committee member John Damianos ’16 said. Now that the new sexual assault policy is being implemented, the focus is on creating a campus intolerant of rape culture.
“Rape culture is more than just perpetrators who assault other individuals,” Damianos said. “It’s a spectrum of harm.”
SPCSA chair Sophia Pedlow ’15 said the committee intentionally separated its suggestion to transform single-sex Greek organizations into co-ed undergraduate societies from a recommendation that administrators assist sororities that wish to become local.
“We’re not saying either/or — we’re trying to present options,” she said.
Yoon said that the two suggestions are both positive steps for the social system, but there is no single correct way to improve social climate.
The recommendations alsosuggest that Bored at Baker be banned on Dartmouth’s network, with violations encoded in the Standards of Conduct.
Title IX Coordinator HeatherLindkvist said banning the anonymous online forum is a “very, very complicated” issue, citing issues of censorship and web logistics.
To further sexual assault education, the document states, the College should expand the physical education requirement to incentivize health programs such as sexperts, sexual assault peer advisors and eating disorder peer advisors.
The recommendations also advise that the College formalize a varsity and club athletics policy that bans students found responsible of sexual misconduct from participating in Dartmouth athletics, provide financial support covering long-term counseling costs for sexual violence survivors and partner with WISE, a domestic andsexual violencesupport center in Lebanon, to give students more options. The college should also design and implement an education program for seniors on workplace harassment, relationship abuse and post-college gender-based violence, the document says.
“A lot of programming around sexual violence doesn’t focus on how to have healthy, good relationships after college,” Yoon said, adding that this program could be incorporated by the Center for Professional Development.
Lindkvist said she is interested in furthering the College’s partnership with WISE, noting that community organizations can provide support students and complement what universities offer. Shesaid the recommendations reinforce and support her office’s work, noting that a climate survey on sexual assault will be completed by the end of this academic year.
Co-director of health promotion and wellness Amanda Childress praised the coherence and relevance of the committee’s recommendations.
“They have played a very big role in the changes that have happened over the past couple of years,” Childress said of SPCSA. “Every year the recommendations get more robust.”
She expressed some hesitation over the recommendation that the College pay students for their work supporting survivors and building positive sexual and social climates. The document cites Yale University’s communication and consent educator program as an example of a structure that supports students working on social influence campaigns.
“I don’t think there’s a dollar amount you can put to a student who’s supporting someone who’s had an experience like this,” Childress said. “I’m not opposed to it, but I’d really want to work with students about what that could look like.”
Survivor advocate Benjamin Bradley said he is working on offering increased first responder training. The office of health promotion has increased trainings to one session per month from one or two a term, in addition to any personal trainings requested by student and faculty groups, Childress said.
Childress said that in addition to SAPA training, which spans one term and functions as an extra class, the health promotion office also offers one-time sessions on how to help friends who are survivors of sexual violence.
The committee’s recommendations build on those of past years’ as well as community feedback from SPCSA’s third annual symposium on sexual assault in April, Pedlow said.
Next steps will include publicizing the recommendations, including targeted outreach to relevant campus groups, as well as conducting more research on sexual violence through the SPCSA’s mini-grant program, which accept is accepting applications, Yoon said. The committee has posted the recommendations on Improve Dartmouth to gauge response to each recommendation.
Pedlow said she is interested in seeing how the “Moving Dartmouth Forward” presidential steering committee’s recommendations compare to those of SPCSA.
SPCSA, which was established in 2010 by former College president Jim Yong Kim, plans to host a town hall in early November.
Correction appended (Oct. 24, 2014):
Due to incorrect information in a campus-wide email, this article originally stated that the SPCSA will host a town hall on Nov. 4. The date has yet to be decided.
Correction appended (Oct. 28, 2014):
The initial web version of this article misformatted to publish certain paragraphs twice.
