SAOC Introduces Peer Advocates

Eleven students, two staff members, and one faculty member are in the midst of completing their 20 hours of training to become peer advocates in a pilot program within the College’s Sexual Advocacy Oversight Committee (SAOC). The advocacy program marks a great leap forward for the SAOC, which as been working towards the formation of this group since 2008.

“The decision to form this group came from student concern, and the fact that students needs are not being met on this campus,” said Kristina Johansson ’14, a participant in the peer advocacy program.“We are really putting pressure on the administration to make more steps.”

A Sexual Assault Policy Working Group Report put forth in the 2005-2006 school year by a group headed by Dean of Academic Affairs Tim Spears, then serving as Dean of the College, was responsible for the formation of the SAOC, the umbrella organization within which the new peer advocacy group will operate.

The recommendations put forth by the ’05-’06 working group led to the formation of the 2007-2008 Task Force on the Status of Women, which released a report in March 2008 in which the members expressed the need for an advocacy program.

There was also a large student protest in 2008, in which students called upon the administration to proactively address sexual assault on campus.

President of the College Ronald D. Leibowitz officially sanctioned the SAOC in the fall of 2008, and in the winter of 2009, the SAOC launched a broad assessment of the needs and resources within the student body.

According to Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life Karen Guttentag, the SAOC’s assessment found that students who had experienced sexually distressing events were underutilizing the confidential resources available at the College.

Title IX, the law that mandates gender non-discrimination, also mandates educational institutes to report incidences of sexual violence, except when the victim chooses to disclose the incident to medical or religious professionals.

Confidential resources available to students on campus include the counseling center, the Health center, the Chaplin’s office, and Women’s Safe. Aside from the staff members in these offices, all other faculty members are not bound by confidentiality, and are required to respond to any incidents that constitute gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment, or sexual assault.

According to Guttentag, Title IX initially carried the intent of ensuring colleges and universities responded appropriately to incidents of on-campus sexual assault and were not brushing these cases under the rug. However, the transparency mandated by Title IX has translated into a perceived lack of confidentiality surrounding the incidents. As a result, the legally mandated college policies appear to disincentivize students to divulge cases of sexual assault to College administrators.

“There is a tension there between what our obligations are to the law and the good spirit behind it, and recognizing a critical aspect of helping survivors to find their balance again — which involves honoring their wishes, letting them define what their needs are, and supporting them to make their own choices and decisions about the course of action they want to take,” Guttentag said. “That may not be charging in and launching an investigation.”

Student organizers responsible for the newly-formed peer advocacy group hope that it will serve as solution that will balance students’ needs to have access to critical information and support, while still allowing them to maintain control over the pace and direction that any outcome or any resulting actions would take.

According to Sophie Morse ’11, who was active in the SAOC up until her senior year, gathering widespread support for the formation of a peer advocacy group was not easy.

“We felt that the College needed advocates, and I wanted to create a program where we had a combination of staff, faculty and student advocates in order to provide survivors with different options,” Morse wrote in an email. “Some of the members agreed with me, and we drafted a proposal but we didn’t have the full support of the committee and the college lawyers raised the issue of granting confidentiality to a large group of people. As of when I graduated in spring of 2011, no action had been taken to hire a full-time advocate or to create an advocacy program.”

Morse’s vision has come to fruition this semester. The team has almost completed the twenty-hour minimum training required by Vermont statue 1614 to become a confidential rape crisis resource.

The College redesigned the job description for the Director of Health and Wellness Education in order to bring someone who could bring the skill set necessary to head this advocacy program. Barbara McCall was hired to the position in June, and when McCall assumed her position this school year, the advocates were ready to train.

McCall said the twenty-hour training involved talks from public safety and community groups such as Women’s Safe, among other training activities.

“Some of the [training] components include digging deeper into what is sexual violence, why does it happen, what sort of cultural components support it, and what does it specifically look like on a college campus?” McCall said.

Johansson stressed the need for the advocates to know more than just the policies.

“I hope we can delve more into the complexities of rape culture, and also the psychological responses such as PTSD and anxiety,” Johansson said. “There is a wide array of response to [sexual violence] that we should have a knowledge of before we start answering phones and giving support.”

While the training for the advocates has begun, the logistics of the programs operations are still nebulous.

“One of the big exciting questions we are getting to answer is ‘what is this going to look like? Will it be a hotline or soft line?  What are the other ways folks can access the group?’” McCall said.

The advocates have talked about the possibility of holding office hours in addition to a hotline or a soft line. There is also continuing debate over the confidentiality issue as to whether the advocates will have to report if a victim appears to present danger to herself or himself.

Alexandra Strott ’15, another student advocate, believes more student participation is necessary and lamented that administrative decisions had limited the group’s size.

“I think there should be more advocates in the future,” Strott said. “It’s an investment, and there is no reason we could not have had more people in the group. A lot of people were turned down from being an advocate, and ideally no one would be turned down.”

Guttentag stressed the need to keep the program small initially, while she also stressed no one was comfortable with the idea of denying information to members of the community who wanted to use it.

“We decided in the middle of that process, we should offer additional resources so we could not only train these advocates but also meet that broader interest for community members,” Guttentag said.

Such resources include workshops available to the whole student body on how to support a friend who may have been attacked.

According to Johansson, the sexual assault advocacy program should be running by November. Johansson expressed her frustration in the timing of the launch, as the advocates were initially intended to complete their training before the semester started.

“There is a lot of urgency for anti-sexual assault work on this campus, and I don’t think the administration has been meeting students’ needs at a fast enough pace.” Johansson said. “The advocacy program has been in the works for years, and we were meant to be trained during the summer which didn’t happen.”

“It’s frustrating because most sexual assaults happen to first-years within the first six weeks of school ... I had hoped the program would be ready by orientation so we could introduce ourselves and get our faces known,” she added.

As for the future of the program, Barbara McCall is hopeful.

“We have an amazing group of people. The training has been fabulous,” said McCall. “It’s been a pleasure to work with them, and I know that I’m thrilled to be working with this program. I can’t wait to see where it takes off from this point.”