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

[Laura Bennett <>]

Great info, Kristen – thanks for sharing. I also look forward to hearing from others as I’ve found the community college population is a challenging with regards to preventative education in the area.  

 

We have focused on revising our policy/procedures so that we had language we could use in prevention efforts. We went from a somewhat legalistic sexual assault/harassment policy to one that was more expansive and covered sexual misconduct overall, including specifically Intimate Partner Violence. We created a Guide to the policy, support, and reporting that you can see here: http://goforward.harpercollege.edu/academics/catalog/1213/18887misconduct.pdf, and we are still updating other materials. I’ve found success by getting into existing communities – sexual health classes, athletic teams, student organizations, and talking about our policy, campus resources, and why a community college cares about any off-campus student behavior overall.

 

Some challenges I’ve faced:

·         The cultural and class differences in the community college population make many things more complex. Having resources in multiple languages and having translators available is something I hadn’t really thought about before, and it is sometimes difficult to find a diverse body of presenters to deliver messages in ways that our students best hear them.

·         The idea that the College has an interest in and/or authority over students’ behaviors off-campus has been a paradigm shift, both for the College and for the students. This seems exacerbated by my observation that non-residential campuses seem to have greater silence than their 4-year counterparts when it comes to discussing students’ sexual activities or choices.

·         Prevention in the form of mandatory education seems like a rare concept in the 2 year setting. We don’t have many mandatory orientations, so getting the messages to the students when you aren’t “preaching to the choir” is difficult.

·         I’ve had students share very personal information with adjunct faculty and so getting adequate information to our faculty so that the entire campus can be allies or have information is helpful, since most of us don’t have a sexual response office or specialized positions.

 

LB

 

Laura Bennett

Student Conduct Officer

 

Harper College

1200 W. Algonquin Road

Palatine, IL 60067-7398

Phone: 847-925-6483

Fax: 847-925-6038

Email:

 

From: Smitherman, Kristen A (Gateway) [mailto:]
Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 10:33 AM
To: Franklin, Robert (VDH); ;
Cc: Mohr, Lisa M (Gateway); Minard, Tiffany S (Gateway); ; Decker, Amber (Gateway)
Subject: RE: Community College Populations

 

Hi Robert,

 

Gateway is a community college in Northern Kentucky made up of 4 campuses with a total of just under 5,000 students enrolled. We were awarded the Campus Program grant in 2011, however, were delayed in some areas due to the cancellation of trainings during our first year. Now that we have had the opportunity to attend some of the technical assistance trainings, we have continued moving forward.

 

Some challenges that the OVW Core Team at Gateway has seen thus far have been: student engagement, non-residential college community (much less of a captive audience available), and coordination of programs and communication across 4 separate campuses. To facilitate smooth coordination of tasks, each of the four minimum requirements was assigned to one of the core team members. Dividing the minimum requirements proved very helpful.

 

However, some successes include: the opportunity to incorporate information in the new student orientations and the ability to go into the general education courses to share introductory information about our grant and program. In addition, the partnership with our local women's center, the Women's Crisis Center, has been extremely helpful in, not only our victims services efforts, but also in connecting our team with community partners that are doing the same work. As a result, we have been able to build a strong CCRT that has been instrumental in developing and recommending policy that has been vetted by a diverse group of experts in various fields. Lastly, the judicial board selection and training process was quite a successful one. The team member responsible for the judicial board training interviewed and selected 10 board members (all students). After receiving individualized training from an OVW J-Board Technical Assistance Provider who helped us edit our training, we held 3 phases of training for the j-board and involved the entire OVW Core Team in leading parts of the training. This was effective in that the J-Board members got to know the entire core team. The final training will be in the form of a mock trial later this month and all core team members and some additional Gateway faculty and staff volunteers will take part.

 

We are still in the early stages of our Green Dot implementation phase, however, our team will be finalizing the implementation plan this summer and rolling it out in the Fall 2013 semester. Some ideas we have been discussing are: target specific groups of students that may be interested in receiving the bystander intervention training (Criminal Justice students, Student Orgs, judicial board students, nursing students, etc.) - these groups have a potential vested interest in receiving the training - and working with faculty to promote, endorse, and encourage the training to their students and to reward students academically for participating. These seem like promising steps in hopefully engaging our students.

 

Thank you for posing the question as we, too, at Gateway to find it challenging to implement the grant program in the community college setting. I hope this was useful and I look forward to hearing from other community colleges on how they have been successful!

 

Kristen

Kristen A. Smitherman

Project Manager – Department of Grants

Gateway Community and Technical College

500 Technology Way | Florence, KY  41042

Telephone:  859.815.7682 | Fax: 859.581.3818

 

Start Here. Go Anywhere.

 

 

From: Franklin, Robert (VDH) [mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2013 3:23 PM
To: ;
Subject: Community College Populations

 

Hello everyone

 

Is anyone doing specific work with community colleges on IPV and sexual violence prevention.  Could you share any successes, challenges, lessons learned, and any specific programs you have found to work well with this population.

 

Thank you in advance

 

Bob

 

Robert L. Franklin, MS

Sexual and Domestic Violence

Community Outreach Coordinator

Division of Prevention & Health Promotion

Virginia Department of Health

109 Governor Street, 9th Floor

Richmond VA  23219

Phone: (804) 864-7739

Fax: (804) 864-7748

 

email:

 

web: http://www.knowcoercion.com

web: http://www.varapelaws.org

web: http://www.vahealth.org/Injury/sexualviolence/

web: http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/ofhs/prevention/