{"id":91665,"date":"2014-04-16T09:52:47","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T13:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=91665"},"modified":"2023-06-27T13:12:02","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T17:12:02","slug":"peers-helping-peers-prevent-sexual-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2014\/04\/peers-helping-peers-prevent-sexual-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Peers Helping Peers Prevent Sexual Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Varun<\/a>
Varun Khattar ’16 (CLAS), right, and Stephanie Lumbra ’15 (CLAS) lead a Violence Against Women Prevention Program peer education workshop at Laurel Hall. (Peter Morenus\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One class at the University of Connecticut tries to upend a lot of what students learned while growing up.<\/p>\n

Students in Women\u2019s Studies class WGSS 3271, a one-credit course offered in the fall, discuss prevalent societal messages about sexual assault or rape in which the burden is often placed on the victim, and they learn how to unravel the culture of violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t walk alone at night, don\u2019t accept drinks from strangers or leave your drink unattended, carry mace or pepper spray, take a self-defense class. The common thread is that the onus is on the potential target,\u201d says Lauren Donais \u201908 (CLAS), coordinator of the Violence Against Women Prevention Program and one of the instructors for the class. \u201cInstead, we advocate that the onus of preventing rape should be on potential perpetrators.\u201d<\/p>\n

The class covers issues surrounding sexual assault and intimate partner violence, gender norms and expectations, the dynamics between men and women, healthy and unhealthy relationships, and images in the media.<\/p>\n

The students also develop facilitation skills and learn how to educate their peers on these issues. On completing the course, they are able to facilitate six interactive workshops<\/a> that explore the continuum of sexual violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s talk about why people are likely to assault others to begin with and how we can get to a place where that\u2019s no longer the case,\u201d says Donais. \u201cThat requires a cultural shift, and that cultural shift begins with these students. That\u2019s why the peer education model is so valuable \u2013 peer educators have more credibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many who have taken the course in the fall and wish to continue with VAWPP also enroll in the one-credit WGSS 3272, offered each spring. The second semester class is an opportunity for students to organize many of the Women\u2019s Center\u2019s events, including the annual Take Back the Night vigil, and design and facilitate their own group workshop, where they can ask questions, voice concerns, and share experiences.<\/p>\n

\"Varun<\/a>
Varun Khattar ’16 (CLAS) discusses with students safe ways to respond to a situation of violence during a workshop on bystander intervention. (Peter Morenus\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As peer educators, they also offer workshops by invitation in residence halls and in classes, and facilitate mandatory sessions for incoming freshmen during summer orientation.<\/p>\n

During a recent invited workshop, two peer educators \u2013 one a junior, the other a sophomore \u2013 skillfully guide a discussion on bystander intervention strategies, helping students in the class figure out strategies to quickly assess a violent situation and decide whether and how to act safely. They suggest a range of effective alternatives to consider, besides directly intervening.<\/p>\n

Some students note that they have been witnesses to violence, faced with a difficult choice of whether to try to help; some have been a victim and had wished someone would intervene.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal is to make [the response] become instinct,\u201d says peer educator Varun Khattar \u201916 (CLAS). \u201cIt\u2019s never going to be easy, but if you think about it ahead of time, it will be easier to decide what you can do to intervene.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of the workshop, co-facilitator Stephanie Lumbra \u201915 (CLAS) tells the students, \u201cGo back to your dorm \u2026 and talk about what we\u2019ve talked about today. The more we talk about it, the more likely that you can be a positive<\/i> bystander in the future. And if you\u2019ve been a victim of violence and someone intervened on your behalf, thank them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khattar was inspired to become a peer educator by a workshop on consent during orientation. \u201cI felt my undergraduate education would not be complete without participating in social justice and student activism,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

A marathon, not a sprint<\/strong><\/p>\n

The work is not for the faint-hearted.<\/p>\n

Not everyone who is exposed to the peer educators\u2019 message is receptive. \u201cCertain students don\u2019t want to engage with the conversation around sexual violence,\u201d says peer educator Brittany Carrier \u201915 (CLAS). \u201cThere are some audiences that are receptive, but there are a lot more resistant groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis work is hard and draining,\u201d she continues, \u201cbut I don\u2019t think I could ever walk away from it because of the moments of realization and change I sometimes see in the students\u2019 eyes, and also because of how I still learn from my facilitations and unpack toxic beliefs in myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adds Carrier, \u201cWhile it hurts to hear, \u2018She shouldn\u2019t have been drunk if she didn\u2019t want to be raped,\u2019 it\u2019s important to have that said in order for us to properly unpack the sexism in it, along with how men feel entitled to women\u2019s bodies, the fact that it perpetrates the idea that men can\u2019t control themselves, and more. \u2026 Just because a group is resistant doesn\u2019t mean that there wasn\u2019t any meaningful change or critical thinking done.\u201d<\/p>\n

The effectiveness of a prevention program is, by its very nature, hard to measure. The peer educators have learned to see their work as an ongoing process.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can be easy to feel discouraged and overwhelmed by the immensity of this issue and our limitations as humans and activists,\u201d says Khattar. \u201cI constantly have to remind myself that the movement to end sexual violence is a marathon, not a sprint.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A group of students trained by the Women\u2019s Center is helping dispel problematic societal messages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":91549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-91665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 10:21:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91665"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92254,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91665\/revisions\/92254"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/91549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91665"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=91665"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=91665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}