Director Reflection
We made it to the end of Year 2! Those of you who hear me reflect on the development of the Center often hear me say that we’re building the plane as we fly it. We are still doing that. As impatient as I am because I’m so tired of people experiencing harm and all the pain that comes after it, I am grateful for our friends, colleagues, and supporters who remind me that building something new from the ground up takes time and doing so during a global pandemic takes even more time. We are learning together, and I remain incredibly grateful for the community at the U of U who take this work seriously and who continue to support us through our moments of growth, our failures, and our celebrations. This year’s growth and development would not have been possible without each of you, including your hearts, brains, and dedication to shifting campus culture.
I want to share a few highlights from the year, and at the risk of potentially leaving people out, I want to do a few specific recognitions of individual people.
First, to our Program Coordinator, Ashley Yong, thank you for your heart and ability to make people feel immediately at ease. Your leadership helped to build our momentum with students on this campus through both behind the scenes support and active engagement. Students have shared with me for years that the most important thing that educators can do to support them is to show up, and one your greatest gifts is exactly that: showing up. You made a profound impact on our student staff and the larger community in just one short year, and for that, we are grateful. Best of luck to you as you move on and continue to make people feel valued, heard, loved, and welcomed. We appreciate you!
Additionally, thank you to the staff in Eccles College of Business who housed us at the last minute for half of this academic year. We were assigned temporary space in Park for this academic year, and right before school started, our offices were flooded. I reached out to our advisory board members asking for help with a temporary-temporary space, and Tara Hardison of Eccles immediately responded, providing us with a small office to work from during Fall 2021.
And finally, to Allie Moore, who thankfully, is not going anywhere, thank you for being a strong foundation for this Center. Allie joined the student staff in October 2020 as an inaugural staff member and has been with us since then.
She developed and led the Fraternity and Sorority Life dialogue sessions, has facilitated numerous workshops with student groups, and doesn’t shy away from asking hard questions. Allie is a critical thinker, quick to help people understand primary prevention and its importance. Allie is incredibly selfreflective, helping us understand how we can each cause harm, and how to interrupt those behaviors. She tells us her mom “found this job” for her, and we are grateful to Allie’s mom and Allie for the incredible gift of Allie’s dedication to ending violence by doing hard things.
We had many high points this year, which are highlighted in this report authored by Ashley Yong. We engaged in research and education. We held space for people to process their experiences after another tumultuous year of intimate partner violence, including the murder of one of our students, Zhifan Dong. We worked with Fraternity and Sorority Life to initiate new programming related to dating and sexual violence, and we facilitated numerous workshops with faculty, staff, and students. We engaged in listening sessions with historically minoritized students to better understand their needs related to dating and sexual violence. We hired four new content creators – students whose job is to educate their peers through informal channels, including social media.
As we look forward, we will continue building community and engaging in research and education. We will keep victims and survivors of violence in the forefront of all that we do, especially recognizing the many, many survivors who cannot come forward for a number of reasons. We know that dating and sexual violence are wound with all forms of oppression and will work to center that in the work we do as we move forward.
Thank you, U of U community, for believing in us, for believing in this work, and for your commitment to shifting our culture to prevent violence from happening in the first place.
Chris Linder MCVP Director Associate Professor, Educational Leadership & Policy
Donations
donated to the MCVP in the 2021-2022 Academic Year
donated for the 2022 U Giving Day
Donations to the MCVP are used to support educational programming for the U campus community. We are immensely grateful to all of our supporters who give their time, energy, thoughts, and donations to our Center.
Donate to the MCVP at bit.ly/MCVPGiving
Thank you to all our generous donors!
Amy Albo
Amy Choate
Bert Uchino
Bethany Hardwig
Bethany Madison
Beverly Quarles
Brent And Bonnie Jean Beesley Foundation
Brittany Badger Gleed
Brooke Abel
Community Trust of Utah
Connor Johnston
Daniel Curtis
David Hamilton
Dhiraj Chand
Erin & Edén Castro Cortes
George Strawley
Humberto Espinoza-Molina
Jess Turuc
Jessica Makin
Jessica Nelson
Julie Barrett
Kathie Miller
Kelsey Rodgers
Kirsten Dorius
Lauren Beames
Lawrence T. And Janet T. Dee Foundation
Linda Fiedel
Lisa Hesse
Lisa Schroeder
Liz Prince
Lyn Hinckley
Marriott Daughters Foundation
Mary Rosenbury
Northern Trust Charitable Giving Program
Paul Humbert-Fisk
Richard K. and Shirley S. Hemingway Foundation
Ruth E. And John E. Bamberger, Bamberger Memorial Foundation
Sara Johnson
Stephanie Buiatti
Stephen John Quaye
Tawnja Martin
The Castle Foundation
Todd Adamson
Educational Workshops
MCVP staff facilitated workshops for members of the campus community and beyond throughout the academic year on historical contexts of sexual violence as well as an introduction to a primary prevention approach to DSV.
Students and staff participants shared that they learned new things they had not previously known and particularly appreciated the “before the violence happens” prevention approach we take in the Center.
Our most requested workshop was Historical & Power-conscious Approaches to Addressing Sexual Violence among College Students.
In this series of two workshops, we provide an accessible overview of the historical roots of sexual violence in the United States, including ties to colonization and slavery. We draw connections between the historical roots of sexual violence and current practices on college campuses, providing strategies for consideration to more effectively address campus sexual violence from a power-conscious, historical perspective. We will discuss multiple alternatives for victim-survivors to pursue resolution to their cases and shift frameworks to focusing on perpetrators to end sexual violence.
Through dialogue and activities, we will develop an understanding of the differences of awareness of, response to, and prevention of relationship and sexual violence among campus communities. Additionally, we provide strategies for developing comprehensive working groups to engage members of the campus community in the primary prevention of relationship and sexual violence.
We appreciate our engaged workshop participants from TRIO, LEAP, ACES Scholars, the Academic Advising Center, FSL, and the House of Hope. We look forward to expanding our educational programming in the coming academic year.
Listening Groups
In April 2022, MCVP staff hosted listening groups for undergraduate students with minoritized identities to better understand how these students perceive and make sense of dating and sexual violence (DSV).
Cis, white, straight feminists have historically left people with minoritized identities out of the conversation on DSV despite an extensive history of activists of color making strides to draw attention to and end violence. Because of this exclusion, people working toward ending DSV do not often center those with minoritized identities, but rather center the white women that we often see as victims. This has a number of adverse effects on victims and survivors with minoritized identities, including lack of devoted resources to these groups and a decreased willingness to identify as a victim/survivor. Moreover, perpetrators target bisexual women, gay men, trans people, indigenous women, and people with disabilities at even higher rates than their peers.
Through 90-minute listening groups, the MCVP staff sought to better understand students with minoritized identities and their needs related to preventing DSV. Student identifying with the following groups were invited to participate and be compensated for their labor:
• Queer Students
• Students with Disabilities
• Black Students
• Latinx Students
• Asian American Students
• American Indian/Indigenous Students
• Undocumented/DACA Students
• International Students
• Multiracial Students
Preliminary Findings
• Participants chose to attend the listening groups because they are frustrated with sexual violence on campus and felt sharing their thoughts would genuinely have an impact.
• Not only are students the experts on the experiences of their identities, but their experiences often align with what research has found about DSV and oppression. (For example, the Students with Disabilities group discussed harmful stereotypes about students with disabilities not engaging in sexual activity.)
• Even when thinking about DSV prevention on campus, students think of response resources.
• Participants believe University administrators are more concerned about the institution’s reputation and profit than they are about eradicating DSV.
• When envisioning a campus free of DSV, the most common response was an increased ability to focus on academics as a student’s main priority.
When asked what he would say to U administrators about DSV prevention at the U, one student said:
Look at the lack of representation of those in highest power at the U. Stop being performative. Providing funding for programs isn’t enough. Being engaged in these programs is what you need to do. Give some of your power to the student body to make decisions for the campus. Latinx Man
We will share the report we generate from our findings with our campus partners. Because the MCVP focuses on primary prevention, our slice of the pie in this work is small. The Center for Student Wellness, the Office of Equal Opportunity, and many others do work in this area as well, each with our own unique focus.
Fraternity & Sorority Life Partnerships
Over the past academic year, the MCVP strengthened our partnership with Fraternity & Sorority Life (FSL) through various educational programs with different members of the FSL community.
FSL Prevention Day
In this double session, MCVP staff facilitated a conversation with participants about the history of sexual violence in the U.S. and the role of primary prevention in addressing dating and sexual violence among college students. Additionally, we discussed what constitutes harmful behavior in sexual and dating relationships and how participants could ensure they are not unintentionally causing harm to people they interact with. This interactive and discussion-based session was facilitated by Allie Moore of Alpha Phi, Ashley Yong, and Chris Linder.
FSL Dialogues
Over the 2021-2022 academic year, student staff member Allie hosted thirteen dialogue sessions with FSL members. The sessions were used to give a place for discussion on topics such as rape myths, consent, coercion, intent to harm, and non-physical forms of abuse. At the end of the semester, we held a co-ed session where participants shared their individual understanding of one another’s experiences with dating and sexual violence. Through the feedback we gained from the dialogue sessions, we heard from students that they wanted more permanent, long-term education on these topics as well as less gender segregated programming on dating and sexual violence.
Interfraternity Council Officer Dialogues
Over four weeks in April 2022, the Center for Student Wellness and the MCVP partnered to facilitate IFC Officer dialogues with fraternity men in formal leadership positions. Myra Gerst, Engaging Men Working Group Co-chair and CSW Engagement Coordinator, and Ashley Yong asked
the officers’ what questions they wanted to discuss. Some questions submitted include:
• How can we vet Potential New Members better?
• How do we safely start dialogues about topics that make people uncomfortable?
• What are some ways to increase safety at parties?
From the submitted questions, Myra and Ashley facilitated dialogues that centered around four subject categories: Party Culture, Dialogues, Identifying Problematic Attitudes/Behaviors, and Resources.
Discussing the history/context of sexual violence, as well as different resources to help prevent sexual violence, was informative and eye-opening.
Fraternity Member at FSL Prevention Day
Caring for Our Community
During the Spring 2022 semester, administration released multiple Clery alerts regarding sexual violence involving members of the fraternity and sorority community. Students began sharing about their personal experiences with dating and sexual violence on the anonymous social media platform YikYak. The MCVP received a number of requests and ideas for educational programming from campus community members. In response, Center staff hosted holding space and processing sessions.
Holding Space Session
On February 1, 2022, the MCVP hosted a two-hour Holding Space discussion open to the entire campus community following the campuswide alerts of sexual violence. The space allowed attendees to share their ideas for educational programming related to addressing dating and sexual violence among college students. Takeaways from the session include:
• The way we talk about and teach consent now may not be enough. We can talk about consent on a broader scale by discussing how we can use it in everyday life through giving examples. Consent can also be taught through the lens of pleasure as liberating and not restrictive.
• Discussion-based education proves to be the most engaging and therefore most effective, through peer-to-peer discussion. The facilitation of these safe spaces for deeper conversations should be a continual presence in a student’s resource bank.
• Dating and sexual violence should be considered an equity, diversity, and inclusion issue, but historically it has been dominated by white feminists. The focus on minoritized student identities should be the center of our work.
• An idea about programming for queer identities was brought to the table. “The Queer Sixth Sense”, was discussed about how queer people have a greater intuition about red flags or abusive behaviors in heterosexual relationships when discussing with their straight friends.
• A partnership with Housing Residential Education was brought up with a focus on primary prevention education.
• A blog post was proposed with the idea of a historical summary of sexual violence at the University of Utah, why it is relevant, and why we need to care about that history now.
Processing Sessions for Staff
As the numbers of students seeking support after being impacted by violence continue to rise on our campus, along with the increase in severity and campus and media attention, we know that our front-line service providers and the people who support them are in need of healing and recovery. The MCVP, along with the Office of The President, created processing sessions for staff with Jameson Holman of Lioncreat Consulting, a counselor external to the U.
The processing groups are organized by role at the institution, in hopes of alleviating some power dynamics in spaces, and to group people by similar roles and responsibilities. The two groups included Direct Service Group and Administrators and External Relations Group.
These sessions were a one-time offering this semester. We may explore offering them consistently for preventative and on-going wellness, rather than in reaction to crisis.
Educational Content Creators
In January 2022, the MCVP hired four Educational Content Creators (ECCs) to develop relevant educational content for college students, directed toward those who cause harm or have the potential to cause harm.
We specifically sought students who did not have previous experience in working in dating and sexual violence to gain perspectives from people who care about this issue, but haven’t previously thought of themselves as “qualified.”
Over the course of the Spring semester, the ECCs:
• Engaged in a curriculum examining the nuances of harm, perpetration, and consent among college students
• Sought out information/knowledge based on our own interests related to DSV
• Examined how violence exists in our personal lives through media and paying attention with our friends and families
• Kept journals reflecting on these pieces that were shared with Chris
• Brainstormed non-cheesy, subliminal ways to educate college students
Next semester, the ECCs are creating a TikTok account featuring a Tinder series. They will also release a harmful behavior campaign, blog series, and more.
Theory to Practice Research Team
The Theory to Practice Research Team began in January 2022 with the goal of exploring existing scholarship about minoritized students and sexual violence. The research team consisted of: Cydney Caradonna, Quentin Hodges, Ivy Farguheson (College of Education PhD students), and Allie Moore and Mar Vega (undergraduate students).
Process: Researchers paired up to center specific student groups: Queer and Trans students, Students with Disabilities, and Students of Color. Researchers searched the Web of Science Database from 2011-2021 for U.S.-based research, shared key terms, and explicitly focused on college students. Researchers identified 35 articles that centered Queer and Trans students, 76 centering Students of Color, and 14 centering Students with Disabilities.
Findings
Researchers found that for Students of Color, “cultural factors” (including “gendered scripts”) often served as influences for sexual violence. Students of Color also identified bystander intervention trainings to reinforce harmful and racist stereotypes. Most of the research about Students of Color used white students as the norm by which the experiences of Students of Color were measured.
Articles discussing Queer and Trans Students primarily focused on prevalence and risk factors. Researchers found that Queer Students do not feel comfortable accessing services related to dating and sexual violence. Additionally, Trans Students are often excluded in the research on under the umbrella of LGBTQ students.
For Students with Disabilities, disability is both a “risk factor” and “outcome” of dating and sexual violence. Additionally, educators often perceive Students with Disabilities as non-sexual, a harmful stereotype that complicates the already complex relationship between Students with Disabilities and sexual violence.
Implications
We need more research—specifically, qualitative research that has thick, rich descriptions. Good research will center minoritized students not making the dominant group the “norm” by which to measure all other students. The majority of research the team analyzed approaches minoritized students from a deficit perspective, making them, rather than oppression, the problem to be addressed. Moreover, most research still fails to address power at the core and instead focuses on risk factors and other deficit-orientations.
Sexual Citizens
As a part of the Anti-Violence Book Club held in Fall 2021, students and staff from across campus read the book Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus by Drs. Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan. The book club met monthly to discuss sexual projects, sexual geographies, sexual citizenship, and more concepts discussed throughout the book.
In January 2022, the MCVP hosted a virtual author visit in which Drs. Hirsch and Khan shared their research experiences as well as thoughts on novel approaches to dating and sexual violence prevention. Many attendees were especially curious about how we can improve sex education prior to college.
Thank you to all our sponsors: Athletics, Department of Sociology, Marriott Library, McKay Music Library/School of Music, Office of Equal Opportunity and Office of General Counsel, College of Social Work, Student Affairs, and Vice President for Research.
Utah Sexual Violence Conference
MCVP staff and Working Group co-chairs attended and presented at the Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault (UCASA) 8th annual Utah Sexual Violence Conference: Re-Envisioning How We End Sexual Violence. The two-day virtual conference educated and engaged attendees on novel approaches to addressing and ending sexual violence. Our staff and partners facilitated two conference sessions:
Building a Campus Community Culture around Ending Sexual Violence
Ashley Yong, MCVP Program Coordinator
Chris Linder, MCVP Director
Kristy Bartley, Preventing Harm Working Group Co-chair
Myra Gerst, Engaging Men Working Group Co-chair
Matt Phister, Engaging Men Working Group Co-chair
Sierra Skindzelewski, MCVP Intern
Description: At the University of Utah, we have begun to build a community-wide commitment to eradicating dating and sexual violence among college students by engaging faculty, staff, and students from a variety of spaces on campus to ensure that we move beyond a typical echo chamber to address violence. The purpose of this session is to share lessons learned and to engage participants in a discussion about strategies for reaching people who may not otherwise see themselves as “experts” or having anything to contribute to addressing dating and sexual violence among students.
Why
Bystander Intervention Training DOES NOT Align with a Primary Prevention Model
Allie Moore, MCVP Student Staff
Description: The bystander interevention model may seem like an effective way to prevent violence but it is merely a refined form of victim-blaming. By deflecting the resolution of challenging institutions that support violence, it puts the responsibility of ending violence on those most vulnerable to experiencing it. Instead of relying on the potential intervention of bystanders, we strive to focus on intervening directly with the person causing harm, also known as primary prevention. By switching the focus and responsibility to the person causing harm by teaching them how not to cause harm, we take the blame off of potential victims and bystanders, prevent the violence from occurring in the first place, and reduce cases of relationship and sexual violence.
Posts like these started a conversation about what can be done to hold these people that have caused harm accountable.
Allie Moore, MCVP Student Staff
Following campus-wide alerts of sexual violence in late January 2022, Allie Moore, MCVP student staff member, wrote a blog post titled, “Students Are Using Social Media Apps to Anonymously Talk About Their Experiences of Sexual Violence on Campus.“ In the post, Allie discusses the ways in which students feel comfortable talking about dating and sexual violence and what we can do to give them a place to make a difference in campus culture. The blog post was shared in @theU and various local news outlets.
Staff Highlights
Chris Linder serves as an associate editor for both the Journal of Higher Education and the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Chris was also named a 2021 Presidential Scholar at the University of Utah.
Ashley Yong serves on the Rape Recovery Center Board of Directors.
Blessing Heelis and Allie Moore both graduated from the University of Utah with their bachelors degrees. Allie will continue on in the MCVP as our inaugural Graduate Assistant.
