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

[Steven Pearlman <>]

As one of the founders of StudentSuccess.org, I thought it a reasonably good
idea for me to chime on in this question of online programming's potential
to positively affect the sexual assault problem on college campuses.

In response to Mr. Atherton-Zeman's initial question, I want to begin by
saying that I had the pleasure of seeing his program performed at a Safe
Society Zone conference and thought it was excellent—a wonderful mix of
comedy and drama.  I also met him personally and found him to be a great
guy.  I also really appreciate his zeal for this issue and his frequent
posts on this lists.  Therefore, Ben, I hope you won't be too upset that I
disagree with the premise of your question: "online presentations vs.
'live'".  I'd rather hope that the question should not be whether or not to
do one or the other, but rather how we can get schools to do both!

As Mr. Thompson, whose program is also excellent, aptly noted, online
programming does have some limitations, such as the fact that it does not
interact with students as live programming can, but  it also has some
advantages: it can reach student prior to their arrival on campus, can track
every individual student's progress and aggregate test score, can render
different scenes (parties, dorm rooms, frat houses, etc.) realistically, can
bring in survivor testimonials, can confront individual students with their
particular misunderstandings, and much more.  It also can be a great tool
for those campuses that do not yet afford the amount of time during
orientation that this subject matter requires.  And it's in a format that
resonates with our digitally-oriented students.

I therefore hope we as a community fighting this epidemic problem are not
working from the premise that absolutely no online programming could ever
have a positive impact on the sexual assault issue, nor should we work on
the premise that no live programming could ever have an impact.  To
summarily and categorically rule out any kind programming as devoid of any
worthwhile potential seems problematic to say the least.  Neither live nor
online programming should be ruled out, and neither is a magic bullet in and
of themselves.  We need good programming in all available formats.

Again, I am familiar with Dr. Foubert's, Mr. Atherton-Zeman's, and Mr.
Thompson's programming, and it’s good programming.  It would be great if
every campus used their programming.  However, none of their programs, or
even all, will eradicate sexual assault.  Nor will ours.  As  Ms. Landreman
noted, some schools use our online program as foreground for additional
on-campus programming, something we wholeheartedly support and encourage!   I
bet all of the aforementioned programs would benefit from students seeing
our programming first, and I bet our programming would benefit if followed
up by additional campus programming.

We're working hard to educate students about sexual assault and to reduce
its presence on campuses.  We're certainly not alone in that, nor are we
even the forerunners.  So far, though, about 30,000 students have seen our
programming and (we believe) are better for it, as are their campuses.  How
much better, to what extent, and how we can be even better than we are
requires more evaluation and research, but we are fighting the good fight
and making a difference.  We hope to find ways to work with other programs
to create compounded impact against this terrible epidemic, and we always
welcome discussion about how we can improve what we do.

Thanks to all of you for your ear.

Respectfully,

Steven