UP joins 59 colleges in violence prevention program

By Sarah Hansell Staff Writer hansell14@up.edu

This spring, the University of Portland will join 59 other colleges across the nation in training a group of faculty and staff in violence prevention.

They will be trained by Green Dot, an organization that believes any community can reduce violence. It will help UP implement a strategy for violence prevention.

Once trained, the faculty and staff, called the Sexual Assault Prevention and Education Team (SAPET), will hold voluntary workshops for students in fall 2013 to teach them how to recognize and intervene in situations of potential violence, including sexual assault.

"(Green Dot) has been known to significantly change students' perceptions of power-based personal violence, and research is showing that it's very promising in reducing the incidence of violence on campus, and that's one of things that we're most excited about," member of SAPET and counselor Kristina Houck said.

UP received a three-year federal grant in September for about $158,000 from the U.S. Department of Justice, allowing it to participate in the Green Dot training.

According to the National Institute of Justice's 2007 Campus Sexual Assault Study, about 14 percent of college females have been victims of at least one completed sexual assault since entering college.

In 2008, professor of sociology and current SAPET member Martin Monto conducted a study on sexual assault at UP, which took a sample of almost 300 students from every upper-division theology class on campus during one semester. Monto's research found rates slightly lower than the national estimate.

"About nine percent of women report something that would legally constitute a rape in the previous year," Monto said.

However, only 1.4 percent of the respondents said they had been raped when asked directly using the word "rape."

"Very few of the sexual assaults that occur on campus are reported … which limits our ability to investigate and respond," Monto said.

The 2010 Department of Public Safety Crime and Fire Report shows two forcible sex offenses were reported.

The new grant aims to help UP increase reporting and victim care as well as implement a peer intervention program.

"The grant will help us to increase reporting and investigation, improve our services to victims, and most importantly, most of the grant goes to implementing a sexual assault prevention program based on peer intervention," Monto said.

According to the study, 42 percent of students have witnessed a situation in which they thought sexual assault was possible.

Of these students, about half intervened or did something to try to reduce the risk of a sexual assault, according to Monto's research.

"The goal of the study was to find out what prevented students from intervening and ways to increase peer intervention in potential sexual assault situations," Monto said.

The results of the research found two main barriers that stopped peers from intervening in potential sexual assault situations.

"One, students often don't notice or pay attention to these situations," Monto said. "(Another barrier) to intervention is, we tend to treat sexual behavior as private behavior. In other words, none of my business."

Monto believes to reduce sexual assault, the way potentially nonconsensual sexual behavior is viewed must change.

"Our only hope for reducing sexual assault is for students to treat it as a community responsibility," Monto said.

The program will focus on training students how to recognize potential sexual assault situations and successfully intervene.

"Being able to recognize what sexual assault is is a useful tool because that will not only help prevent it in situations where someone is potentially going to be assaulted, but it will also spread awareness of the fact that sexual assault happens and that it's not always cut and dry like we perceive it to be," senior Jessie Hethcoat said.

With the grant money, UP will also partner with the Portland Women's Crisis Line as well as send the group of UP faculty and staff to conferences dealing with the issue of violence against women.

The grant money will also allow Public Safety to consult with and be trained by the Portland Police Bureau in order to better address sexual assault issues.

Another goal of the program is to help eliminate common misconceptions about sexual assault.

"If students are going to be trained to be not only more aware, but more sensitive of these issues, I think that will help solve the problems I've seen as far as perceptions of sexual assault by kind of turning those misconceptions into awareness," Hethcoat said. "I think that something needs to be done to get people thinking a different way."

Although the workshops are voluntary, they have been well-received at other colleges, according to Monto.

"In places where they've done this, the student response has been wildly positive," Monto said. "Students are frustrated with this issue and they would like to have some way to positively and proactively address it."

One challenge, however, may be getting students to attend the workshops.

"Unfortunately I think if you're going to hold voluntary workshops, it might not reach all of the students that really need it," Hethcoat said.

Monto is excited to implement the program and see what changes result.

"We're going to be one of the few campuses to meaningfully and measurably reduce sexual assault," Monto said.