Just days into the academic year, Mary Wyandt-Hiebert’s team of peer educators has already been booked to give 24 anti-sexual-assault presentations to classes at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
“This semester is the most we’ve ever had this early,” said Wyandt-Hiebert, director of UA’s STAR Central, an education and advocacy program to prevent sexual assault and relationship violence.
From new federal legislation to increased media scrutiny, there’s a spotlight on ways to reduce sexual assaults among college students. At UA, the approach this year includes a new online educational program called Haven. The program, developed by Washington, D.C.-based EverFi, features video-based interactive scenarios to help students think about how they should act in real-life situations.
“I see it as just one more way of reaching out to students, to help students be able to identify and define what sexual violence is,” said Wyandt-Hiebert, who joined UA in 1998 and created the university’s STAR Central program.
This year she’s been appointed to national leadership roles, serving as co-chair the American College Health Association Campus Safety and Violence Coalition and the association’s Protecting Students from Sexual Assault Task Force.
Wyandt-Hiebert said UA police statistics on rape don’t give the complete picture about how often students are affected by sexual violence. A total of five forcible sexual offenses were recorded by campus police in 2012, the most recent year statistics are available.
But Wyandt-Hiebert said those numbers don’t include crimes in off-campus apartments — and that there are many sexual assault victims who choose not to report to authorities what happened to them.
A better measure might be taken through surveys, she said.
“For decades, national samples have shown that one in four college women are sexually assaulted. That’s been for 40 or 50 years,” Wyand-Hiebert said, adding that some recent estimates released by the White House suggest the number might be closer to one in five women assaulted.
“One in four or one in five, it’s too many,” Wyand-Hiebert said.
She works to train the student educators who give the campus presentations to peers across campus as well as in various classrooms at the request of faculty.
“I just think more faculty are becoming aware of sexual assault for a variety of reasons,” Wyand-Hiebert said.
Faculty members request classroom presentations when they know that they’ll be away on a given day, Wyand-Hiebert said.
“A lot of freshmen are exposed to us through their first-year classes,” she said.
This year eight student interns will present facts of sexual violence and discuss how to identify and respond to scenarios that can leave peers vulnerable. The presentations include talk about how to step in as a bystander to prevent potential harm from occurring.
“They’re facilitating conversations with students. It’s not just lecturing at them,” said Wyand-Hiebert.
Discussion includes education about drugs and alcohol and “talking about incapacitated rape, which is probably the greatest problem we see among college sexual victimizations,” Wyand-Hiebert said.
Another effort begun last year as a pilot program is focused on bystander intervention, Wyand-Hiebert said. Part of the campaign is to get students to speak out and affect society, with Wyand-Hiebert describing how crude jokes, highly sexualized media imagery and casting blame or making fun of victims contributes to a ubiquitous “rape culture.”
Wyand-Hiebert said researchers have found that only 6 percent of college men perpetrate sexual violence.
“We have 94 percent of guys who are not that way and who can play a vital role in changing cultural attitudes,” Wyand-Hiebert said.
Speaking out isn’t easy, Wyand-Hiebert acknowledged. Students have told her that “we know what we should say, but it’s hard to do that,” Wyand-Hiebert said, noting the education campaign is targeted to all students, not just men.
She emphasized that the STAR Central program includes advocacy services for victims of sexual violence in addition to general education efforts aimed at preventing assaults. The university’s peer education effort, known as RESPECT, in January won a national award from peer student leaders.
Shannon Haupt, associate director for the UA’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Compliance, said the new Haven program fits in with the federal Campus SAVE Act and the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. All new students have been sent emails “strongly encouraging” them to complete the training, Haupt said.
“Both of those regulations address providing preventative education programs to incoming students,” Haupt said.
Other students will also receive information about Haven. She couldn’t say how many students had yet completed the program.
“The goal is that all students engage in the course,” Haupt said.