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

[Raven Bennett <>]

Greetings! 

My name is Raven Bennett and I am a survivor and student sexual violence prevention activist turned professional sexual violence prevention activist. 

I am writing to share with you all an exciting opportunity for collaboration on an innovative social action project related to preventing sexual violence in fraternities.  

Last year I created a program called the Fraternity Mentorship Program in partnership with the fraternities at Swarthmore College. This program addresses the issue of sexual assault by actively engaging fraternity brothers in creating a more positive culture around sex, gender, and sexuality in their fraternity. In the program, older brothers are trained to act as mentors to incoming brothers and are assigned a mentee. Mentors and mentees meet at least one hour a week for a semester in order to develop a trusting mentorship bond. Both the mentors and mentees also attend special topic trainings on Gender and Sexuality, Consent and Allyship, Alcohol and other Drugs, Bystander Intervention, and Masculinity. 

As part of my Honors Psychology thesis, I conducted research on this program. I found that the Fraternity Mentorship Program was successful at positively changing participants' attitudes. Both fraternities that participated demonstrated significant decreases in rape myth acceptance over the course of the program. Additionally, our treatment group, who also participated in the mentorship component of the program, attended significantly more trainings and in turn demonstrated greater rejection of male sexual dating violence.

Motivated by the success of the program in the Swarthmore College community, a few months ago I applied for the Lang Social Impact Fellowship, a post-bacc at the Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility that is designed to provide continuing support to expand the impact of a social action project. Excitedly, I was granted the fellowship and will spend the next year expanding the impact of the Fraternity Mentorship Program.

In order to do so, I wish to conduct a follow-up study in which I aim to implement and evaluate the Fraternity Mentorship Program at four or five other institutions in addition to continuing to organize the program at Swarthmore. I am looking for sexual violence prevention and response professionals, professors, and researchers who might be interested in coming on board as collaborators. If you yourself are interested or you know of any professors, researchers, or professionals who might be interested in the program, I would love to connect and speak further about the potential for collaboration. Thanks for your consideration!

Sincerely,

Raven

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Raven Bennett

Lang Social Impact Fellow 

Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility 

Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility 

500 College Avenue 

Swarthmore, PA 19081