Improve Sexual Assault Resources at Wesleyan

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Author: femnet

Started: October 21, 2008, 3:43:18 pm

Target: Members of the Wesleyan Community

Category: Civil & Human Rights

Supporters:

518

Goal:

100,000

Goal Progress:

Status

Active

Dear President Roth,

We as members of the Wesleyan community (students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni), urge you to make improvement of sexual assault prevention and response a priority for the University this year. We recognize that ending sexual assault will take a multi-faceted approach; a coordinated campus-wide initiative is necessary. Specifically we ask for improvement in the following ways:

• Creation of Staff Sexual Assault Response Position
Currently there are no staff sexual assault advocates. This position could be a professional or student. Ideally this person (or team of people) will be able to provide emergency counseling and support to survivors, direct survivors to existing on-campus and off-campus resources, and function as an ongoing advocate to assist survivors in legal proceedings, residential and academic concerns.

• Creation of a Sexual Violence Website
A website should function as the electronic home for sexual assault prevention and response on campus. It should include information for survivors, friends/allies of survivors and faculty/staff on support resources. It should also include information about ongoing prevention efforts on campus, and be prominently linked from the Wesleyan website in order to be easily found.

• Facilitation of Confidential Reporting
In order for Wesleyan to effectively understand the extent to which sexual assault occurs on campus, in addition to empowering survivors, an online anonymous reporting form option should be made available.

• Student Judicial Board Policy Revision
Continued effort should be made to empower survivors of sexual assault with the most confidential and flexible options possible by allowing them to choose from multiple options for how their cases will be tried in addition to the SJB.

• OBHS, Public Safety, Administrator, and Reslife Staff Training
It is important to ensure and publicize that all of these critical staff members receive regular and extensive training in appropriate sexual assault response, as they are likely to be among the first personnel approached by a survivor (especially in lieu of a specific sexual assault advocate).

• Improvement of Prevention Efforts
Additional support needs to be directed towards sexual assault prevention efforts for incoming students, especially during orientation. Revision of the orientation schedule and expansion of existing programming (i.e. Unspeakable Acts) is recommended to allow for follow-up discussion.

We know that these changes will send a clear message to the community that sexual assault will not be tolerated on this campus. Furthermore it will signal that Wesleyan is unified in its efforts to prevent this violence from occurring, and capable of fully supporting survivors who do experience it.