and told all my family and friends back home about bystander intervention.”
“I helped a friend when she wasn’t able to help herself.”
by Amy Martin, with additional reporting by Jazmine Hughes ’12
the dots that has helped change the conversation,” says Bergeron. “People believe that it is their responsibility to speak out when something isn’t right.” A visionary move
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2007 study by the U.S. Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice found that nearly one in five college-aged women reported having experienced sexual assault or attempted sexual assault during their time in college. Other studies and surveys suggest that during the course of a lifetime, one in four women will experience sexual assault. The statistics are staggering, and laws and guidelines for how colleges should respond have evolved. The 1972 Title IX law, which guarantees Americans equal access to education regardless of sex or gender, gave the U.S. Department of Education oversight over the way colleges handle sexual assault cases. But what the law requires of colleges hasn’t always been clear, and the guidelines handed down by the department have become increasingly complex over time. In 2011, the department issued a memo now commonly referred to as the “Dear Colleague Letter” to provide further guidance to institutions on their responsibilities under the law, spurring new focus on the issue within institutions and in the media. Several years before the “Dear Colleague Letter,” the discussion about how to improve prevention efforts and provide better services to survivors was already well underway at Connecticut College. Unlike at many schools, no single incident spurred the conversation;
“I use the buddy system every party night.”
rather, it was a lack of reported incidents that had administrators concerned. In 2007, just two incidents of sexual assault were reported. In 2008, there were three reported cases; in 2009, there were four. “National statistics indicate that these crimes are notoriously underreported, and the extremely low numbers that were being reported on our campus seemed to reinforce those statistics,” says Associate Dean of Student Life Sarah Cardwell. “If victims come forward, we can make sure they get the support they need.” Student and faculty activists were leading discussions in classes and across campus, and in 2008, five students in one gender and women’s studies senior seminar, led by Mab Segrest, then the Fuller-Matthai Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, organized a major campus conference, “The Right to Security of Person: Creating a Campus Free of Sexual Assault.” At the time, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women was taking applications for grants to create new campus programs and policies to reduce domestic violence and sexual assault. In a move that Bergeron now describes as visionary, College administrators applied. With $300,000 in funding, Cardwell “I convinced and others moved ahead with an ambitious a guy friend plan to hire a full-time coordinator of not to use the sexual violence prevention and advocacy, integrate prevention and response training word ‘rape’ and education into the campus culture, as a joke.” build a community coalition, and enhance survivor services.
GREEN DOTS: Connecticut College has implemented a national bystander intervention program that trains students to recognize situations in which their peers may be in danger and teaches them different techniques — referred to as “Green Dots” — to intervene. These are real examples from Green Dot-trained students. CC:connecticut college Magazine
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