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

This morning's issue of *Chronicle of Higher Education* includes an
extended article: "Rape-Prevention Programs Proliferate, but 'It's Hard
to Know' Whether They Work" by Piper Fogg.

Here are some excerpts:

[begin excerpts]

Imagine that you are a male police officer walking down a dark alley. 

Two drunken men surprise you, take your gun, and then sexually assault you.

This is the scenario groups of young men are asked to visualize during a
presentation at Binghamton University. 

Part of a sexual-assault-prevention program designed for college
fraternities, the exercise is meant to sensitize men to the way a female
rape victim might feel.

The program, a combination of popular prevention strategies, attempts to
help men understand sexual consent and explains bystander behavior-- how
third parties can intervene to stop potential assaults.

In an ideal world, such programs would help do away with rape, or any
unwanted sexual contact, on college campuses. 

But most prevention programs have not been proven to reduce incidents of
sexual assault at all.

One complication, say experts in the field, is that, as awareness of
sexual assault at a given college grows, so, too, does the number of
reported assaults, because people feel more comfortable coming forward. 

Studies estimate that as many as one in four college women is a victim
of rape or attempted rape.

"It's hard to know whether a program works or not," says Dara Raboy-
Picciano, creator of Binghamton's program.

Still, spurred by rape-education advocates, concerned parents, and
scandal-wary administrators, these programs continue to spread. 

Concerns about lawsuits have also prompted colleges to bolster their
prevention strategies. 

While court rulings on colleges' liability in sexual-assault cases have
been inconsistent, litigation can be very expensive, says Karen-Ann
Broe, a lawyer at United Educators Insurance, a risk-management and
insurance company that serves many colleges.

 "We strongly recommend that colleges and universities have some type of
prevention program geared toward their students," she says.

So does the U.S. government. The Department of Justice's Office on
Violence Against Women gives grants to colleges to develop or strengthen
various resources, including policies related to prevention, victim
counseling, and training for administrators and the campus police in
identifying and responding to sexual assaults.

Some colleges try to reach all their incoming freshmen during
orientation, or work the training into their curricula, while others aim
to reach a few hundred students a year. 

On some campuses, well-financed women's centers funnel thousands of
dollars into the effort, while other colleges have found ways to educate
a good chunk of students without a real budget, relying on student
volunteers and fund raising.

<snip>

"There is no magic bullet," says Paul Schewe, a psychologist at the
University of Illinois at Chicago and director of the Interdisciplinary
Center for Research on Violence. 

The field is relatively new to academe, and not all experts agree on the
best approaches. 

In fact, one professional squabble became so ugly that two prominent
prevention experts do not talk to each other anymore.

Still, researchers on sexual-violence prevention say that studies show
that some programs may help change not only attitudes, but also behaviors.

<snip>

John D. Foubert, an associate professor of education at Oklahoma State
University, says that in a field where proof is often elusive, the Men's
Program has been shown to work.

The program, which Mr. Foubert created in the late 1990s, consists of an
hourlong workshop on sexual assault. 

The cornerstone of the program is a video that dramatizes the rape of
the male police officer, which is both graphic and disturbing. 

And according to his research, Mr. Foubert says, the video increases
men's aversion to rape while casting them not as potential abusers but
as "potential helpers" who can help prevent assaults.

On its Web site, Mr. Foubert's organization highlights statistics from
studies he has conducted on the program's effectiveness. 

<snip>

In 2007, Mr. Foubert and two co-authors published a study showing that
10 percent of freshman members of a college fraternity who did not see
his program committed acts of sexual assault during the academic year,
compared with 6 percent of those who saw the program.

<snip>

One problem colleges face in choosing from a dizzying array of options
is that many programs have not been scientifically evaluated. "It takes
money and time and energy to evaluate programs," says Christine A.
Gidycz, a professor of psychology at Ohio University, who has run
studies on her own risk-reduction program for women.

Even the evaluated programs have their limits. 

For example, there are few if any published studies that have documented
behavioral changes that last longer than the length of an academic year. 

Most studies do not measure men's actual sexual aggression but instead
measure things like intentions and attitudes, which haven't been proven
to predict behavior. 

And programs are often evaluated by the creators themselves.

Another question surrounding prevention programs is whether they can
deter those most likely to commit rapes. 

The majority of rapists, almost all of whom are male, are never reported
or prosecuted, according to David Lisak, a clinical psychologist at the
University of Massachusetts at Boston who has spent more than two
decades studying rapists. 

These "undetected rapists," as he called them in a 2002 paper, hold
rigid beliefs about gender roles and objectify women. 

They are usually hypermasculine, equating aggression, sexual prowess,
and violence with their own adequacy. 

They tend to use alcohol deliberately to make their victims more
vulnerable to attack.

Their behavior, says Lisak, often emerges from sexually violent
subcultures, such as those whose members consider violent pornography
entertainment. 

Such men, he and other experts say, do not change.

<snip>

As a longtime rape educator, Dorothy J. Edwards knows the limitations of
prevention programs firsthand. 

Fed up with the same old rape skit, she decided to throw out the script
four years ago. 

That's when she came up the Green Dot model.

The program asks people to imagine that every positive action countering
sexual violence is a green dot on a map, wiping out red dots of aggression. 

The strategy is to educate socially influential people in the techniques
of bystander intervention, who in turn influence others to join in,
creating a sort of viral enthusiasm for the cause. 

Ms. Edwards, who directs the Violence Intervention and Prevention Center
at the University of Kentucky, uses the term "power-based violence,"
figuring the new term will attract more men, who might otherwise dismiss
a phrase like rape prevention as something only women need worry about.

So far this semester 2,500 people have finished the training, and close
to 50 percent are men. 

A recent study showed that freshmen who took part in the training
increased their understanding of bystander behavior and reported they
were more likely than before to intervene in various scenarios.

<snip>

Experts believe that with more attention on prevention, colleges will
continue to learn what works. Ms. Edwards, of Kentucky, echoes some of
her peers when she says it doesn't matter to her which strategy comes
out on top, as long as the goals are met. "I couldn't care less about
Green Dot," she says. "I want to end rape."

[end excerpts]

The article is online -- but requires a subscription -- at:
<http://chronicle.com/article/Rape-Prevention-Programs-Pr/49151/>