Oct. 26th, 2017
"I have a lot to say about this. I have written a longer paper about this and would be happy to share, but first I'm going to keep it at this: in November of this year, I was asked by my school to participate in a pilot campus training on how to make the school more sustainable. In this program, nowhere were their derogatory images, caricatures, demeaning language. The program was simple and straightforward: our environment is in danger and we have to do something about it. I mention this because that same concept doesn't seem to carry over to sexual assault. The images used in this program were belittling and derogatory. If I had the opportunity to paste them in this box, I would, but this format doesn't allow that. In any case-- the message I got as a survivor was that being sexually assaulted was funny. The second message I got was that sexual assault only happens on college campuses. The only statistics it gave on sexual violence were those of undergraduate sexual assault. This is how you reduce an issue. This is how students form misconceptions that sexual assault must just be a college- student problem, and as I'm sure you must understand-- any issue that is reserved only to a specific group of people is no longer seen as an issue. It's seen as the fault of that group of people. To be honest, I don't really think this program intended to do good work. I'm not sure who created it, but I was disturbed."
