From September 15 to October 15, communities and campuses around the country celebrate culture and history of Hispanic people are celebrated and honored. September is also Campus Safety Month for colleges and universities, making it a perfect time to shed light on the importance of campuses providing culturally competent resources and support to Latinx and Hispanic students. Creating a safe campus starts with affirming every students’ cultures and lived experience, and that starts with understanding what certain terms we use mean—and what terms students prefer. Though Latinx and Hispanic are often used interchangeably, “Hispanic” broadly refers to people of Spanish-speaking descent, while “Latino/a” (or the more gender-neutral term “Latinx”) refers to residents of the U.S. who trace their ancestry to Latin America. The Impact of Gender Roles Understanding these and other cultural touchstones of Hispanic, Latino, and other communities, campuses can provide effective and culturally appropriate support and resources for Hispanic survivors. A student’s country of origin and generation may have a significant influence on how they respond after experiencing dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking. Traditional gender roles, machismo, and marianismo, strong family values called familismo, fear of shame, and law enforcement all play significant roles when […]
Ensuring a safe return to campus for students, faculty, and staff has taken on a new meaning and challenges for college campuses as the COVID-19 pandemic lingers. Campus leaders must balance COVID-19 safety protocols with a pressing need to improve student safety in other areas, including dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. Recent research suggests the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent stay-at-home orders significantly weakened financial and social support systems. These stay-at-home orders were particularly devastating for those who experience domestic violence and intimate partner violence at home, as one study found that of those also experiencing violence at home before the onset of the pandemic, nearly 23 percent reported that the violence had worsened. Unemployment and isolation from others have left survivors of domestic and intimate partner violence susceptible to increased violence in the home. The reopening of college campuses provides an opportunity for those individuals experiencing violence at home to escape from their abusers and for campus staff to provide resources for them to escape from abuse permanently. The reopening of campus is an opportunity to provide support for victims of violence, providing a haven from their abusers, as women 18-24 and 25-34 have the highest […]
Conducting a student climate survey on sexual misconduct can have many benefits to institutions of higher education. Climate survey data can help schools develop prevention programs, allocate victims’ assistance resources, and modify policies in a data-informed way, based on the actual experiences and opinions of students. However, to be meaningful, the data must reflect the entire student body at a given school. Many schools have found that only a small proportion of students who are invited to take the survey actually do so. Low response rates are the biggest challenge to climate surveys and often make it difficult to have confidence in the data. When very few students participate in a survey, it raises concerns that the data may not be representative; in other words, students with certain characteristics (e.g., women, freshmen) or experiences (e.g., a history of sexual violence victimization, involvement in advocacy efforts) may be more likely to take the survey than others. Schools would not feel comfortable making important decisions that affect all students based on data from small or biased samples. Therefore, schools interested in conducting climate surveys need to plan carefully to maximize response rates and ensure sample representativeness Download Document
Campus climate surveys can be used to track sexual misconduct prevalence rates or to evaluate the success of campus- wide victim services and prevention programs. Climate surveys can also be used to identify programming and service needs on campus. For this reason, many institutions want to use a climate survey as a needs assessment in Year 1 of their Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) Campus Program projects. However, to allow for thoughtful planning and to ensure the success of the survey, implementation in Year 2 is likely to be more productive. With a Year 2 spring survey administration in mind, this factsheet provides step-by-step guidance (with links to additional resources) and a recommended timeline for planning and implementing a climate survey within the OVW Campus Program structure Download Document
This document contains key resources for schools of higher education interested in using the Qualtrics-programmed version of the Campus Climate Survey Validation Study (CCSVS) survey instrument to conduct a student survey. These resources and the programmed Qualtrics survey file are available free of charge to any institution of higher education that has a Qualtrics license and is interested in conducting a student survey to document the school’s prevalence of sexual assault, other forms of misconduct, and the campus climate related to sexual misconduct. Download Document
Pride month is a time to celebrate the progress in achieving equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community, but we must work to ensure that all members of the LGBTQ+ community receive equality.
Continue ReadingThis year marked 20 years since April was first recognized as Sexual Assault Awareness Month and while there has been significant progress has been made, there still remains a great deal of work to be done.
Continue ReadingThe Toolkit for Preventing Interpersonal Violence among Students Studying Abroad is designed to increase the capacity of colleges to prevent interpersonal violence among students who participate in study abroad programs.
Continue ReadingThe Toolkit for Preventing Retaliation After Sexual Assault within the College Context is designed to increase the capacity of colleges to prevent students from experiencing retaliation related to sexual assault reports.
Continue ReadingSexual assaults can have a tremendous impact on the mental and physical health of the women that experience them, making it very important that campuses support survivors to enable their success.
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