Penn Violence Prevention office triples in size, expands outreach to grad. students, athletes

Over the summer, the Penn Violence Prevention Office tripled in staff, welcoming Associate Director Malik Washington and Program Coordinator Katie Chockley .

They join Director Jessica Mertz who has been working on violence prevention at Penn since 2009.

Part of why PVP expanded was to accommodate the natural growth of the office as it sought to engage more students. Another important prompt was the results of the 2015 Association of American Universities’ campus climate survey, which identified specific areas where Penn needed improve provisions against sexual violence.

“A lot [of the results] were things that we had already known, but which really became solidified when we saw it backed up by data,” Mertz said.

Following the release of the AAU results, PVP set up three working teams of administrative staff to look at the role of sexual violence prevention within specific spaces: among LGBTQ students, among graduate and professional students and with regard to men and masculinity.

This semester, some findings of these working teams have manifested in policy.

For graduate and professional students, this semester was the first time that PVP created a Thrive At Penn module specifically for them. This is also the first time that Penn Anti-Violence Educators was expanded to include graduate students, five of whom are already in training to hold anti-violence workshops for their peers.

PVP hopes to hold similar targeted workshops for LGBTQ students. After holding a qualitative survey with self-identified LGBTQ students, PVP found that there are particular barriers that LGBTQ students face in accessing resources to address sexual violence.

“Something we found is that LGBTQ students have trouble identifying their own experiences as violent. It’s a problem in many communities, but particularly when the violence is being inflicted by a person of the same gender,” Chockley said. Other concerns for LGBTQ students are whether anti-violence resources are queer-affirming and confidential.

The PVP office has found that this targeted research and outreach is the most effective in engaging students. Going forward, they hope to replicate a similar process for international students, who will be a priority this semester.

New initiatives aside, PVP has also expanded its scope for existing projects such as PAVE which has doubled its number of undergraduate educators. Since the beginning of this semester, PAVE has held three workshops, including one for the football team. The group committed to giving violence prevention workshops to all varsity sports teams at Penn.

While both the PVP office and its initiatives have grown, PVP staff emphasize they cannot and are not attempting to solve sexual violence on their own. Rather, their role is to empower students to address this problem as a community.

Washington said that in recent weeks, it has been particularly moving to witness students coming out to advocate against the attitudes demonstrated in the leaked email from off-campus organization OZ.

“To see the level of engagement and passion that arose from this incident, and particularly to see it around young men, is very encouraging,” Washington said.

Mertz said the OZ incident has “brought more people to the table” to discuss issues of sexual violence – people who are not necessarily affiliated to advocacy groups or have a history of activism in this area.

“In the past, groups like Abuse and Sexual Assault Prevention, Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault and PAVE were always the ones that were expected to push back [against sexual violence.] What we’re seeing now is students recognizing that it can’t just be those groups,” Mertz said.

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