Response letter to administration’s message

Editor’s Note: this opinion piece was written in response to the campus-wide email sent on Monday, March 9 by Associate Provost for Student Success Mary Geller, addressing the letter to the editor authored by these three students last week titled “Administration is not doing enough: join our walkout.” Geller’s email addressed the demands posed in the previous letter, writing to explain what steps to prevent sexual violence are already underway at CSB+SJU, and other “student safety reminders.”

Hi Mary,

Thank you for your attentiveness to our article. We are glad it reached people because this is an extremely important issue. We understand some of our demands and calls to action for the administration are a little unclear, so let us clarify for you.

To start, we are aware that there are two Title IX coordinators. Our concern is that they are the Deans of Students as well, and their main focus is not sexual assault on campus. That is no fault of their own, but may limit the time and resources they have to devote to sexual violence response. By “dedicated Title IX coordinator,” what we mean is a faculty member whose sole focus is to work with compliance and reports concerning Title IX. Looking back to the campus response following the sexual misconduct at Pat Hall, we noticed that both a Title IX focused coordinator and Prevention Project coordinator were employed at CSB+SJU and part of our campus efforts to reduce sexual assault, dating/domestic violence and stalking (SADVDVS). While we understand that the Office of Violence Against Women (OVW) grant which helped support this work was unfortunately not renewed, we are disappointed by the decision to use only existing resources to continue sexual violence prevention, rather than investing additional resources to make up for lost grant funds and ensure that the progress made by Project EMBRACE could be maintained. The lack of recent attention to Project EMBRACE is evident on the official web page, which still lists Tamara Hennes-Vix as the Title IX Coordinator and point of contact. Our key concern is that the recent reports of sexual violence on our campuses are emblematic of the consequences of declining to prioritize violence prevention.

Second, we understand that there is already bystander intervention and information training for RAs and new students. What we would like to see is these programs strengthened and the audience widened. Maybe that means reoccurring training for students every year or every other year. An incentive to attend this training in previous years was a better chance at off-campus housing. Incentives for the target audiences on consent and bystander discussions could reduce passive participation in these programs, which is something I think most first years do as a way to “check off” the training from their orientation. Along with that, online training facilitates passive participation. If this was given in person to smaller groups, it would create a more active participation environment. This is in no way a criticism of the student residential life community (RAs, CAs). We understand the immense amount of pressure this is, along with being a student and managing your own responsibilities.

Third, we understand that the issue of transportation after the last Link is a complicated one, and we don’t have a perfect answer. We are not calling for Life Safety to serve as free Uber drivers. However, we believe it is important to have a conversation about how the unique structure of our campuses may make CSB students vulnerable. By nature of having bars near CSB, SJU students travel to St. Ben’s campus to drink and must then find transportation back to St. John’s. In an ideal world, these students would simply “follow the established schedule to avoid being stranded away from their home campus,” but in reality, they may miss the bus and ask their Bennie friends if they can stay over. This dynamic creates social pressure for St. Ben’s students to agree to allow Johnnies, who’ve often been drinking, to spend the night. This may increase vulnerability to sexual misconduct and violence. While official policy tells these students to sleep in Mary Commons and establishes that SJU students are not to be overnight guests in CSB residence halls, these policies fail to reckon with the social reality on our campuses. We believe that campus policies must be informed by the reality of student experiences and created with the unique structure of our campuses in mind.

Finally, the events and resources that the school and organizations have put on around sexual misconduct and consent are recognized and appreciated. However, student participation in education efforts is only one component of a campus wide culture shift. A majority of these events are arranged on CSB campus, which is not where the audience who needs to learn about consent is. Policies and resources provided by the institution are also essential to support survivors and create a zero-tolerance environment for sexual abuse. Recent communication has placed much of the responsibility on students to facilitate change, including calling for attendance at events promoting healthy relationships, promoting bystander trainings and even encouraging students to only allow their own guests into residence buildings. These calls to action place responsibility on students, which often falls to women and those who already care about violence prevention enough to show up.

Overall, we welcome the administrations collaboration and hope to create positive change. While we do not have access to campus wide email lists like the administration does to respond to student articles, we appreciate the attention it has drawn to an issue that is not at all resolved. These things only change if we talk about them, and while it can be uncomfortable or disruptive, the goal of the walkout, the opinion piece and this response is to foster discussion and communication.