Activating Our Campus 2017 Breakout Sessions

We all want to be proactive bystanders, those who step up and into harmful and oppressive situations. We assume that with the 4 D's to bystander intervention (Direct, Distract, Delegate, and Delay) in our toolkits that nothing will stop us! But what do we do in those situations that still have us hesitating to step in? Our privilege, power, and oppression impact our comfort with and ability to intervene in all kinds of problematic situations. What identities do we have in common with the people involved? What identities are different? How does this help us or defer us from intervening? In this breakout session, we plan to unpack the role that identity and intersectionality plays in bystander intervention and work in collaboration to brainstorm ways we can address barriers to intervening.

This breakout session will provide people who facilitate workshops on their campuses with tools on how to navigate difficult and problematic conversations and questions that come up in sexual assault and social justice workshops. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss scenarios and practice and how to respond in order to still have a constructive conversation that stays on topic and guides the conversation back to the original point. This breakout session will discuss what this looks like for people of varying identities, how sexual assault affects them differently, and how allies can utilize this tool to lessen the emotional labor that people from more marginalized identities face, and make their services more inclusive and welcoming to people of diverse identities and backgrounds.

This breakout session will start out with some general statistics about sexual assault, such as how many Americans are sexually assaulted a year, the age range that is at the highest risk, etc. It will then move into the topic of the fetishization of women of color, starting with the definition of racial fetishization. We will discuss how this perpetuates stereotypes and then ask them about the stereotypes that they've heard or things that people have expected of them because of stereotypes. Then we'll talk about why it's not a compliment to be called exotic and examples of that. We will also talk about how this relates to sexual violence, how women of color are seen as hyper sexual. And I want to finish with discussing ways to combat this kind of behavior and rejecting it. This breakout session will be discussion based, and will involve group participation, so they can take what they learn and use it in their life and their experiences.

This highly interactive program sheds light on the power structures and societal attitudes enforced by everyday language that helps create a rape-accepting culture. Participants will help name this language, and work to address the harm, and what discuss what we can do to create change in order to be more inclusive in our every day This program will engage in attendees in recognizing harmful language and expectations that people of different identities face on a daily basis.

Bringing national campaigns to a college campus can seem daunting, especially if it is the first time your organization is trying this. There are many questions to consider, from selecting the right campaign to fit your campus, to redesigning it for your student population. This session will focus on preparing attendees to turn national campaigns into appealing events for their student body. There will be a focus on proper advertisement, comparing advertisements that worked well with those that did not. There will also be a discussion on budgets and funding, and finding ways to make bringing a national campaign to campus as cost efficient as possible. Attendees will leave with an increased understanding of how to redesign a national campaign for a college campus. They will be able to create advertisements that grab students’ attention and result in higher turn out, and they will also be able to trim the costs of campaigns by designing the program to fit their campus. Finally, they will leave with some constructive ground work laid out for them to bring a campaign to their campus.

We will be facilitating a discussion based workshop on sexual assault in relationship violence in trans communities. Some of the things we will discuss include racial bias, workplace discrimination, educational institutions, and intimate partner violence in the context of gender and gender non-conformity. We will also cover a general trans vocab list. This presentation will be followed with several discussion questions focusing on the trans community, and what we can do to end sexual assault and relationship violence.

This breakout session will discuss the social determinants of sexual assault, with an emphasis on communities of color on college campuses. We will discuss the need for these populations to be centered when developing interventions, and provide a framework students can use to: (1) asses community needs (2) become critical of interventions and (3) brainstorm ways they can contribute to empower communities and optimize interventions

This breakout session will talk about the function of Title IX on campus. We will give a brief description of the Clery Act and the Violence Against Women Act. We will focus on how this Intersects with DACA (students who are here with research funding, undocumented students). We will discuss this policy, and things we can do as an institution to support affected students without putting targets on their backs. This presentation will include a discussion and an interactive activity to start conversations and collaboration about how to serve students from these populations.