Duke tackles sexual assault outside of White House awareness campaign

President Barack Obama announced the It's On Us sexual assault awareness campaign in a video last week.
President Barack Obama announced the It's On Us sexual assault awareness campaign in a video last week.

The launch of the White House's “It’s On Us” campaign to raise awareness about sexual assault on college campuses received considerable attention last week, but Duke is pursuing its own methods to tackle the issue.

Bystander intervention is the main focus of the campaign. The administration appealed to Americans to step off the sidelines and make personal commitment to be a proactive part of the solution. Nearly 200 colleges and universities nationwide have already committed to joining the president's initiative, though Duke is not among them. Administrators and student leaders at the University said they focused on implementing and improving the initiatives that already exist on campus.

“Duke is not taking part in the campaign this year since we already have very robust bystander intervention campaigns underway,” said Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs.

Juniors Lavanya Sunder, Duke Student Government president, and Keizra Mecklai, DSG vice president of equity and outreach, participated in a White House confrence call about the “It’s On Us” campaign last week.


Video by It's On Us campaign

“Though we were excited about the White House pushing to start a conversation about bystander intervention, we were hesitant to start the campaign on Duke's campus until we were able to combine it with some tangible action," Mecklai said.

Sunder and Mecklai are currently discussing with the administration the potential for increasing the scope of one such project, Prevent. Act. Challenge. Teach. training, in the future.

“In an ideal world, all incoming freshmen would be PACT trained during their first year. For now, we continue to make steps in a positive direction, like the compulsory Helping to Advocate for Violence Ending Now training for the Class of 2018,” Mecklai said. “Hopefully, as our plan for PACT training develops, we will be able to determine a tangible action that Duke students can take, and launch it with the 'It’s On Us' campaign.”

PACT is an initiative of the Women’s Center that oversees the training sessions for bystander intervention. The center trained 550 people last year, a 300 person increase from the year before. Amy Cleckler, gender violence prevention and services coordinator at the Women's Center, stressed that training people to know how to react before, during and after an incident happens is a key part of the solution.

“I have really seen the dialogue on campus shift. It has changed the way that the conversations are happening. We measured pre-training, post-training and three months out, people are intervening more," Cleckler explained. "Not only is the campus climate changing but also bad things are being prevented. People are being responded to in a way that they feel is comforting.”

PACT is only one of the initiatives at Duke that tackles the issue of gender violence and sexual assault. October has been designated as Gender Violence Awareness Month and will be featuring many discussion opportunities as well as workshops. As part of a previous awareness campaign, stickers with information regarding the resources available at Duke were put in the bathroom stalls of the residence halls.

Cleckler noted that students have started powerful projects on their own, citing the Breaking Out photo campaign that will be exhibited in October. The Women’s Center and Wellness Center have collaborated to train party monitors who seek to stop sexual harassment in social settings.

“Staff, faculty and students together must accept the responsibility to look out for each other and to help each other,” Cleckler said.

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