U.S. university students work to improve campus policy on violence against women

WNN Breaking

Campus Accountability V-Day & Safer campaign image

(WNN) NEW YORK, U.S.: For the second year in a row college students are using transparency to prevent, reduce and respond to sexual violence on university campuses across the U.S. The Campus Accountability Project (CAP) database has met its goal of participation from over 70 schools across the country. Currently, the database houses 233 policies in an online, public and searchable database, which details what colleges and universities are doing to prevent, reduce and respond to sexual violence on campus. The database publicly recognizes the successes of some schools’ sexual assault policies while also identifying gaps in others.

Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER) and V-Day are calling students across the country to submit their campus’ sexual violence policies to the Campus Accountability Project (CAP) Policies Database. The idea is to to reach the goal to produce 300 new published policies for student violence safety on campuses.

The Winter Break Challenge working with V-Day and SAFER, which began in December, asks students to register at www.safercampus.org and submit their school information using CAP’s easy, step-by-step policy review form.

“Young people too often fall through the cracks of their campus bureaucracy. Policy is the first step to building an effective movement on campus,” said Sarah Martino, Board Chair of SAFER talking to the needs for violence reporting.

Students and college alumnis are now being given the opportunity to bring ‘real’ change to campuses nationwide by encouraging their friends and fellow activists to submit to CAP. For those whose schools are already in the database, activists can post on Facebook and share their thoughts on a new “Why Sexual Assault Policy?” video and engage with SAFER and V-Day activists across social media platforms.

Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER) is a volunteer-run organization that has been training and supporting student activists for a decade. SAFER offers comprehensive programming to support student-led movements for campus sexual assault policy reform. In addition to the Campus Accountability Project Policies Database, SAFER’s website houses the Activist Resource Center, an online library of tools for organizers. SAFER also runs a national, in-person training program to help students kick-start policy reform campaigns and offers ongoing mentoring through the Activist Mentoring Program (AMP!).

As part of the accountability project, SAFER will be releasing a series of training videos addressing the components of a comprehensive sexual assault policy that includes an outline of definitions on primary prevention and risk reduction in cases of violence against women. The issues also include crisis interventions and long-term survivor services. Reporting, disciplinary procedures and oversight are also part of the focus. The videos will provide suggestions for concrete improvements for school policies to strengthen violence prevention efforts and to help improve the experience of survivors of violence across participating U.S. campuses.

V-Day is a global activist movement working to end violence against women and girls. It raises funds and awareness through benefit productions of Playwright/Founder Eve Ensler’s award winning play The Vagina Monologues and other artistic works. In 2001, V-Day was named one of Worth Magazine’s “100 Best Charities” and in 2006 one of Marie Claire Magazine’s Top Ten Charities.

In 2011, over 5800 V-Day benefit events took place produced by volunteer activists in the U.S. and around the world, educating millions of people about the reality of violence against women and girls. To date, the V-Day movement has raised over $85 million and educated over 300 million people about the issue of violence against women and the efforts to end it, crafted international educational, media and PSA campaigns, reopened shelters, and funded over 13,000 community-based anti-violence programs and safe houses in Democratic Republic Of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq.

“We encourage students to join SAFER and V-Day in identifying policy gaps and holding schools accountable for preventing and addressing sexual violence on campus,” said Susan Celia Swan, Executive Director of V-Day.

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With an informative video addressed to university students across the U.S., SAFER breaks down why violence policy is so important to anti-violence movements on U.S. campuses. Encouraging students to use the Campus Accountability Project to figure out what their school is doing or not doing to address and prevent rape and sexual assault is part of the process. This campaign is giving college students the power to do what organizers for the campaign have stressed and hope for: to “hold their schools accountable!”

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