Many greek organizations on campus have taken steps toward reducing gender violence at Duke by committing to train their members to prevent, act, challenge and teach.
The incoming members of many groups overseen by the four greek councils are now required to participate in PACT training, a student-facilitated workshop sponsored by the Women’s Center. The five-hour sessions promote awareness and dialogue about gender violence and equip participants with behaviors and strategies to combat forms of gender violence including sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking and relationship violence.
“The reduction of sexual misconduct is something that the four group councils have put at the forefront of all of our agendas,” said junior Segun Babatunde, president of the National Pan-Hellenic Council.
The councils began to discuss PACT training in response to evidence of gender inequity published in the Spring 2013 Greek Culture Initiative report, wrote junior Ian Zhang, president of the Inter-Greek Council, in an email Wednesday.
“It all starts with recognizing that inequality and gender disparities exist on campus. The GCI was a quantitative reaffirmation of what Duke students already know,” Zhang said. “For the members of IGC and leaders of the entire greek community, the answer is very clear—fix it.”
The IGC, the NPHC and the Interfraternity Council are all committed to training executive board members, along with new members.
President of the Panhellenic Association Katie Howard, a junior, said presidents and risk managers are going through training. She added that for each president who has already been through training, Panhel is sending another member of the organization to receive PACT training.
By training new members and executive members alike, Zhang said he hopes to create institutional change from both the top down and ground up. All incoming executive and new general body members of the IGC will undergo their PACT training Friday.
IFC members’ responses to the trainings have been overwhelmingly positive, said junior Chris Brown, IFC director of public relations, who participated in PACT training with his fraternity, Kappa Alpha Order. Several IFC chapters completed the workshop in the Fall.
“All of the chapter presidents have been 100 percent behind it,” Brown said. “The part that really makes it work well was that it was just an open and honest dialogue, and you were able to say what you felt and exchange those ideas with everyone there.”
The workshops are an early stage of systemically combating gender inequity issues.
“Obviously it’s not the only step, but the information and education that it gives along with the fact that it inspires further discussions and awareness is something that we really value,” Babatunde said.
Amy Cleckler, gender violence prevention program coordinator at the Women’s Center, said she is excited about the greek call-to-action. But she noted that the Women’s Center does not have the resources to train all members of the greek community by the end of the year.
“We only have six student facilitators,” Cleckler wrote in an email Thursday. “We will train as many of them as we can, but it’s not possible for us to train them all.” Moving forward, the program plans to offer open-call trainings to greek students in the Fall and provide opportunities to train all new members in the following Spring.
“We hope that individual chapters will provide the incentive for their members to join the trainings,” Cleckler said. “We can only offer the trainings and hope that students attend.”
She added that the PACT workshops are conducted in groups with fewer than 30 members due to the sensitive nature of the conversations that take place. The PACT program did not intentionally target greek students, but training organized groups is easier, Cleckler said.
“We feel that these trainings are equally needed by all students at Duke in order for the community to learn skills to recognize and intervene in situations of gender violence,” she said.
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