Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

Our Center is in preliminary conversations our Residential Programs staff to pilot a module on sexual assault education for use in our First Year Experience Program.  To this point Residential Programs has relied on a session during (jam-packed) Orientation and "floor meetings" led by peer educators on first-year floors in our traditional residence halls as their primary means of educating students about this issue.  We believe those programs are needed and should remain (in some form), but we're collaborating to develop another venue for delivering this important message.  As a result of some recent discussions, we're beginning to look at sexual assault education as a "program" stretched out during the first semester, rather than as isolated activities - we would continue to start with a session at Orientation, followed by peer-led discussions (primarily around UD's sexual misconduct policy and the potential ramifications of violating it), then move into a more "sophisticated" discussion later in the semester, perhaps through our First Year Experience course.  The thought here is that students' understanding of this issue and its relevance to them / their friends / roommates, etc. will have "matured" after having been exposed to the issue through these earlier pieces of the program and having lived in our student residential community for a couple of months and seen what really goes on.  

Our preliminary thinking about how this First Year Experience "module" on sexual assault might be structured has focused on some type of "homework" (i.e. outside the classroom activity), followed by an in-class discussion, perhaps co-facilitated by a faculty member and a member of the Residential Programs staff.  Which brings me to why I post this inquiry on WRAC-L.  

Our (i.e. UD's) struggles with sexual assault education are surely not unique.  Other institutions (and perhaps W/C staff) have struggled with this also, and I'm sure some have come up with effective ways of educating students about this issue.  I'm particularly interested in hearing from colleagues at institutions where:

        1.        an interdisciplinary approach to sexual assault education (i.e. such as our proposal to use faculty / Residential Programs staff as                                 co-facilitators) has been used in a classroom setting.  How have you structured that and what has been the reaction / result?
        2.        you have successfully used some "out-of-class" activity (i.e. individual on-line or CD-rom based program, mock hearings, speakers,                         readings) as a preparatory tool for a subsequent in-class, in-depth discussion about sexual assault.  What have you used and how                         successful were those tools?  

If you are familiar with sexual assault education programs that incorporate either or both of these activities, please contact me directly at the phone number or e-mail address below.  If you are not the point of contact for this at your institution, please share with me the name, phone number and e-mail address of the person who is so that I may follow up with them directly.  Thank you.

Lisa Rismiller
Director, Women's Center
University of Dayton
#201 Alumni Hall
Dayton, OH  45469-0322
Phone 937-229-5390 (main)
            937-229-5592 (direct)
Fax 937-229-5334