Tag Archives: University of New Hampshire

Pre-Thanksgiving Linkstravaganza

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So, the blog will be quiet over the next few days while we take some time off for the holiday, but I will leave you with some reading material! Also, if you’re in NYC and want to come hang out and help us out for a couple hour on Monday night, RSVP for the “work party” at our office! And of course, if you really want to get to know SAFER, consider applying for our Board….

Where Is Your Line has a hard-to-read (triggering!) but very striking story about frat culture (or at least one particular frat culture) and sexual violence. Written by a frat member, in fact.

A lot of people have written about the St. Mary’s College student who killed herself shortly after accusing a Notre Dame football player of sexual assault (see Jezebel and Care2 for more). An insanely sad story. Also sad is that no one at Notre Dame or St Mary’s seems to be talking about rape.

Feminist Students United! at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill call out a gross sign put up by the hockey team as being representative of rape culture and fight back with their own awesome sign. Unsurprisingly, the commenters on their blog just think they don’t have any sense of humor. We haven’t heard that before…

The awesome folks at Prevention Innovations tackle the serious issue of how behavior that could be considered stalking can become normalized on college campuses, particularly cyberstalking.

A University of Minnesota Student is waging a one-woman fight to get her community to take groping seriously and improve the reporting process at the U of M.

Guess what? Schools have inaccurate Clery statistics!

The Loyola Maroon addresses the victim-blaming comments (online, of course) on their story about a student arrested for rape.

Finally, a lot of folks are talking about this week’s Law and Order SVU episode, which apparently dealt with campus rape! I haven’t gotten a chance to catch up with it yet. Anyone else see it? Thoughts??

Know Your Power: UNH’s Awesome Bystander Social Marketing Campaign

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University of New Hampshire has long been home to Bringing In the Bystander, a “prevention program emphasizes a bystander intervention approach and assumes that everyone has a role to play in ending violence against women.” Run by Prevention Innovations, a “research and training unit [made up of UNH faculty and staff] that develops, implements and evaluates cutting-edge programs, policies and practices that will end violence against women on campus,” Bringing in the Bystander is nationally recognized as a successful prevention program. Also, it’s just pretty badass.

This month, Prevention Innovations is taking it to the next level with their new social marketing campaign, Know Your Power. [Click that link, you should see the images, they're pretty great.] The grant-funded campaign will use media spread around campus and in the local area to bring home the message that everyone has power in intervening and preventing violence against women. The eight primary images have the following themes: Intimate Partner Violence; Disclosure; College Party Scene; Cultures that Support Sexual Violence; and Stalking. Here’s how they are doing it:

The Know Your Power social marketing campaign is running on the UNH campus from February 16 through March 30, 2009…The images and the campaign logo appear in a variety of media around the UNH campus. Components of the campaign include:

  • Series of 8 poster images appear as a full screen “pop up message” when students log on to all 456 computers in the all the computer clusters at the university;
    See poster images
  • Four of the 8 the Know Your Power posters are hung together in all the UNH residence halls. Posters have also been hung in all the academic and other campus buildings (e.g., the student center and the recreation center, downtown Durham businesses, and recognized fraternity and sorority houses);
  • Four poster images appear on “table tents” in all university dining hall facilities;
    See table tent images
  • All first-year students receive a “Know Your Power” product package during the first week of the campaign. Products include a water bottle with the Know Your Power logo, bookmark with one of the Know Your Power poster images, and Know Your Power button pin and flashlight/carabineer displaying the Know Your Power website;
    See product package components
  • The first-year portal on the university Blackboard site displays the Know Your Power button image and a link to the campaign’s website;
    See button image
  • Six of the 8 poster images are appear on the side of the UNH shuttles and off campus buses so they are visible to both passing drivers and pedestrians;
    See bus wrap images
  • Two of the poster images are on book marks that are distributed to the main UNH and 4 branch libraries, as well as the campus and off campus book stores. All patrons/customers will be given a book mark during the campaign period;
    See bookmark images
  • A public service announcement is presented during all UNH home athletic events. Additionally, athletic events held in the arena with a scrolling scoreboard will display the message as well; and
  • The development of the Know Your Power web site www.know-your-power.org. The website address is printed on all campaign images and product posted and distributed campus wide.

Comprehensive! And super exciting. Prevention Innovations consults with and does workshops at other colleges, so add them to your resource list. They are also selling the Know Your Power posters, which might make a good addition to your campus. I’m looking forward to see the outcomes of the evaluation surrounding this campaign, and highly recommend folks check it out and learn more about the programs.

Congratulations UNH!

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Hooray for elections having consequences.

The University of New Hampshire has gotten a big ol’ chunk of CDC money to study the effectiveness of its sexual violence prevention program, Bringing in the Bystander.

The grant for $898,262 supports the Bringing in the Bystander Project, a collaborative project of UNH Prevention Innovations and led by researchers Victoria Banyard, professor of psychology; Sharyn Potter, associate professor of sociology; Mary Moynihan, research associate professor of women’s studies; and Jane Stapleton, research instructor of women’s studies and family studies.

The award enables researchers to administer and examine the effectiveness of the Bringing in the Bystander Project on two campuses — UNH and UMass Lowell — during a three-year research period. The Bringing in the Bystander Project has two components, an in-person prevention program and the “Know Your Power” social marketing campaign.

“The Bringing in the Bystander Project helps prevent sexual violence by instructing community members to take an active part in preventing violence. Community members are encouraged to interrupt situations that could lead to assault or during an incident, speak out against social norms that support sexual violence, and have skills to be an effective and supportive ally to survivors after an assault,” said Banyard, co-director of Prevention Innovations.

There are a two reasons this is absolutely wonderful news. First, it means this excellent program (one of the best I’ve seen) will continue, and be well-funded, for the next three years. Second (and more importantly), this study will actually give us empirical data about the effectiveness of a specific sexual assault prevention program, something that has been sorely lacking for the past thirty years or so. Unsurprisingly, for all the dozens of studies that have been funded focusing on what female behavior is more likely to “lead to” sexual assault, there has been virtually no money directed toward figuring out what actually works in preventing men’s violence. This is the kind of information advocates have been begging for, and I’m so excited that the Obama administration is supporting an evidence-based approach to preventing sexual violence.

The University of New Hampshire has really taken the lead on programming to prevent sexual violence, and they deserve a lot of credit for what they’re doing. I’m glad money is flowing in the right direction for once!

A wagonload of good stuff

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I have a bunch of good stuff to share with you, but first, may I share some twilight musings?

As I’m falling asleep last night, I start thinking about Disney-style fairy tales (I have a 3 year-old, so these things pop up despite my best efforts). You know the part where the princess/damsel in distress is lying there unconscious and the Prince Charming/Creepy Guy she’s never met kisses her? I hate to be a killjoy, but that’s sexual assault. Think about it. Imagine the person of your romantic dreams. Let’s say the person is funny, smart, and has high standards of personal hygiene. After a date, the person leans in and asks, in suitably smoldering tones, “May I kiss you?”. Hot. HOT!

Ok, now imagine that person, personal hygiene and all, sneaking into your bedroom, before you’ve met, and laying a wet one on you while you sleep. Not hot! NOT HOT! Not very romantic either, even for a 3 year-old. Of course, when my kid asked me for the shoes with Disney princesses on them, I did not explain this. I just said Mommy doesn’t like shoes with characters on them, not even Dora, for whom she has a soft spot.

Now on to the good stuff. I only found this awesome collection of stats today, though it’s been out for a while. A very handy reference for pros and students alike.

We’ve talked about bystander intervention here a lot, because we think it’s the coolest thing since Chia Pets, and today I came across this site from the folks at the University of New Hampshire. Good stuff! Another example of a good bystander intervention resource is this student-produced video. Let us know if you’ve made a video, and we’ll feature it on our YouTube page.

Finally, though you’ve seen Valena’s posts here, I don’t think anyone’s mentioned that she was just elected as our new Board Chair. She’ll be cracking the whip from now on. Since she’s a sexual offense prosecutor, I don’t think that will be a problem.

A number of relevant reports

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Inside Higher Ed has an article on a new report on sexual assault at the University of New Hampshire, which has been tracking all varieties of “unwanted sexual contact” among their students for 20 years. (via Feminist Law Profs) A lot of what it reports is not news, but I found this fascinating:

Overall, UNH has found that the number of unwanted sexual experiences on campus declined significantly from 1988 to 2000, during which time the university established a crisis center and put a number of prevention programs in place. However, there has been little change since 2000 — prompting a need for more creative, broad-based responses, said Victoria Banyard, an associate professor of psychology and a co-author.

A second report is actually from last year, but was linked to by this article and I hadn’t read it, so I figured it’s worth reposting for others who missed it. The Center for Research on Violence Against Women at the University of Kentucky did a survey to find out how unsafe women at UK felt, why and where they felt unsafe, why they did not report sexual assaults, and what could be done to fix these problems. The key idea here is to have research that feeds directly into attacking the problem:

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