Preventing Alcohol-Related Problems on Campus: Acquaintance Rape The Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Funded by the U.S. Department of Education Preventing Alcohol-Related Problems on Campus: Acquaintance Rape A Guide for Program Coordinators Peter Finn Abt Associates Inc. A publication of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education For further information contact: The Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention http://www.edc.org/hec/ 800-676-1730 HigherEdCtr@edc.org This publication was produced with funding from the U.S. Department of Education under contract number SS9-30-25-001 with Abt Associates Inc. and contract number SS95013001with Education Development Center, Inc. Views expressed are those of the contractors. No official support or endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education is intended or should be inferred. Published 1995. Reprinted 1997. The Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Education Development Center, Inc. 55 Chapel Street Newton, Massachusetts 02158-1060 Cover design by Emily Osman Contents Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Executive Summary: A Note to Presidents, Vice Presidents and Deans Chapter Summary The Starting Point: Acquaintance Rape and Alcohol Go Hand-in-Hand Why Should Top Administrators Get Involved? First, Federal Law Requires Action Second, Acquaintance Rape Causes Serious Harm to Schools Third, Acquaintance Rape Is a Major Problem at Many Schools What Can Top Administrators Do? Establish and Enforce Firm Penalties for Acquaintance Rape Provide Adequate Levels of Material Support for Prevention Help Arrange for All Pertinent Campus Segments To Collaborate in the Effort Make Sure the Program Includes the Elements of Success Give This Guide to an Appropriate Campus Leader Endnotes Chapter 2: Drinking and Acquaintance Rape on Campus Chapter Summary What Is Acquaintance Rape? Acquaintance Rape Is Widespread at Many Schools In Most Acquaintance Rapes, Drinking Is Involved Background to the Alcohol-Violence Link Endnotes Chapter 3: Implementing or Improving an Acquaintance Rape Prevention Program Chapter Summary Principal Implementation Steps 1. Identify Like-Minded People 2. Form (or Use an Existing) Policy and Planning Team 3. Develop an Implementation Plan 4. Conduct a Needs Assessment 5. Select Target Audiences 6. Select Interventions 7. Develop Procedures for Using Student Facilitators 8. Identify Needed Resources 9. Gain Support from Top Administration 10. Develop a Public Relations Plan 11. Decide How to Market the Program 12. Secure and Educate Allies 13. Evaluate the Program or New Services 14. Train the Peer Facilitators 15. Announce the Program (or New Intervention) and Recruit the Target Audience 16. Work to Change School Policies Gaining Support from Top Officials Methods of Gaining Support The Role of Crisis in Enlisting Support The Continuum of Program Development Schools That Have Not Begun or Are Just Beginning a Program Schools With Partially Developed Programs Schools With Well-Developed Programs Chapter 4: Prevention Programming Ideas Chapter Summary How to Use This Information Prevention Activities Reach Students during Orientation Conduct Activities in Residence Halls Target Fraternities and Sororities Target Athletic Teams Establish Strict, Clear School Policies Other Approaches Classroom presentations Awareness week Self-defense courses How Much Will Students Listen To? Getting Students To Attend Obtaining Attendance During Orientation Securing Invitations Campuswide Chapter 5: What To Include in Acquaintance Rape Workshops Chapter Summary Topics That Should Be Addressed Incorporating the Role of Alcohol Targeting Student Subpopulations Approaches and Materials Icebreakers Videos Skits Small-Group Discussions Using Peer Facilitators Recruitment and Selection Training Athletes and Greeks as Facilitators Endnotes Chapter 6: Evaluating the Program Chapter Summary 1. Decide What the Goals of the Evaluation Are 2. Identify Who Will Want the Evaluation Results, and Determine What Each Audience Wants To Learn from Them 3. Decide Who Is Going To Conduct the Evaluation 4. Decide Whether To Conduct a Process Evaluation, Summative Evaluation, or Both 5. Select Measures of Effectiveness 6. Decide How To Select Respondents 7. Select Measurement Methods Student surveys Records analysis Key informant interviews Anecdotal evidence 8. Develop Data Collection Instruments 9. Decide How Many Respondents To Contact or Events to Observe 10. Decide When To Collect the Data Baseline data collection Post-intervention data collection 11. Collect the Data 12. Analyze the Data 13. Interpret and Report the Results Endnote Appendix: Summary of Resources Publications Workshop Materials Implementation Guides Evaluation Resources Information About Videotapes The Higher Education Center College and University Administrators and Program Coordinators Index Center Publications List of Exhibits Illustrative Checklist for Tracking Implementation Progress Continuum of Program Development Checklist of Steps for Evaluating the Program Questions a Process Evaluation Might Address Illustrative Workshop Evaluation Questionnaire Preface Preventing Alcohol-Related Problems on Campus: Acquaintance Rape has been written for alcohol and other drug (AOD) prevention coordinators at postsecondary institutions and for other campus administrators who are interested in implementing, improving, or expanding violence prevention programs. The guide begins with an executive summary written especially for top-level school administrators, including presidents, vice presidents, and deans. The guide's primary purpose is to present detailed descriptions of potentially effective approaches to preventing acquaintance rape. The guide presents ¥ a wide range of interventions that some colleges and universities have already implemented which other institutions of higher education can either include in a new acquaintance rape prevention program or add to an existing program; ¥ the pitfalls that other colleges have encountered in initiating or expanding acquaintance rape prevention activities, and suggestions for overcoming these obstacles; and ¥ the implications of the extraordinarily close association between student drinking and acquaintance rape. Acquaintance rape is a complex problem with no easy solution. As noted, the crime is intimately associated with drinking; its widespread prevalence reflects inappropriate norms about sexual behavior that are deeply ingrained among all sectors of society; and the problem has legal ramifications for offenders, victims, and school officials alike. To address this complex problem effectively, college administrators need to develop a comprehensive plan that includes multiple prevention approaches which address each facet of the problem. Rather than focusing exclusively on symptoms, at least some of the approaches need to address underlying causes of acquaintance rape, including inappropriate schoolwide attitudes toward violence and the school's drinking environment. This guide discusses the principal components of the type of comprehensive prevention approach that is needed. Some of the information in the guide comes from available literature, but most of it is based on telephone interviews with administrators, program coordinators, and other staff at more than 30 colleges and universities. Many of the schools were identified by the Network of Colleges and Universities Committed to the Elimination of Alcohol and Drug Abuse, the U.S. Department of Education, professional organizations and associations, and the individuals listed in the acknowledgments. Some of the schools were identified from reports, articles, and other documents on acquaintance rape. Because of limited time and resources, it was impossible to contact the many other schools that have also made concerted efforts to curb acquaintance rape. However, an effort was made to include the experiences of a wide range of schools in the guide in terms of geographic location, size, funding sources, and student population. Use of the Word Prevention This guide uses the terms prevent and prevention to describe efforts to eliminate acquaintance rape. However, acquaintance rape is a crime that will never be eradicated completely. As a result, these terms should be construed to mean minimize or reduce the problem to the fullest extent possible. Acknowledgments Alan D. Berkowitz, Director of the Hubbs Counseling Center and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges; Andrea Parrot, Associate Professor at Cornell University, College of Human Ecology; Lenny Shible, Alcohol and Other Drugs Education Counselor, Ferris State University; and Dorothy G. Siegel, Vice President for Student Services and Executive Director, Campus Violence Prevention Center at Towson State University, provided many significant suggestions for improving the publication. The author thanks Elaine Cardenas, Director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention, for comments on the entire draft; William DeJong, Harvard School of Public Health, for comments on chapter 6; and Stacia Langenbahn, Tammy Enos, and Tanutda Pittayathikhun of Abt Associates Inc. for copy editing the publication. Lavona Grow, project monitor for the U.S. Department of Education, provided useful comments on the draft. The following individuals provided information that was incorporated into this publication: Jeanine Beratta Northeastern University Alan Berkowitz Hobart and William Smith Colleges Paul V. Campbell Wayne State College Sandra L. Caron University of Maine Darren Cecil University of San Diego Eve Chinquini-Goodman University of New Hampshire Emberly Cross University of Michigan Nina Cummings Cornell University Diana Doyle Colorado School of Mines Cathy Earley National Interfraternity Conference Patricia Fabiano Western Washington University Richard B. Funk Pennsylvania State University Karen J. Hart Illinois State University Myra Hindus University of Connecticut Claire Kaplan University of Virginia Michelle L. LeGault University of New Hampshire Teresa Loser Rutgers University John Moon Bangor, Maine Mark D. Nelson Muskingum College Cheryl Presley Southern Illinois University Candyce Reynolds Portland State University Kathy Rose-Mockry University of California at Los Angeles Dorothy Siegel Towson State University Toby Simon Brown University Shamim Sisson University of Virginia Susan Villari University of Pennsylvania Skip Walsh University of San Diego David L. Westol Theta Chi Fraternity Chapter 1 Executive Summary A Note to Presidents, Vice Presidents, and Deans Chapter Summary · Acquaintance rape and student drinking go hand-in-hand. · Acquaintance rape is a serious problem on many campuses with severe consequences for both the victims and the school. · Presidents, vice presidents, and deans need to support the effort to prevent acquaintance rape. Without support from the top, the effort will fail. · To provide adequate support for acquaintance rape programming, top-level administrators need to establish and publicize clear, firm policies regarding acquaintance rape: - apply meaningful punishment to student rapists; - provide adequate levels of material support, including funding, office space, and materials; - help arrange for pertinent departments and offices on campus to collaborate in the effort; and - make sure the program includes multiple and repeated interventions, peer-led workshops, and an evaluation component. Preventing Alcohol-Related Violence on College Campuses: Acquaintance Rape provides guidance to college and university program coordinators and planning committees on how to establish, expand, or improve a program on the prevention of acquaintance rape. However, this introductory chapter is addressed to presidents, vice presidents, and deans. "Are we doing as much as we possibly can to reduce the number of acquaintance rapes on our campus?" is a question every top school administrator needs to ask. Administrators can answer "yes" only if they are providing active, ongoing, and visible support to the effort. This chapter explains why the highest levels of school administration should provide support and what kinds of support they should furnish. Without high-level support, the effort will fail. With high-level support, the problem can be minimized. The Starting Point: Acquaintance Rape and Alcohol Go Hand-in-Hand School administrators already know that student drinking is their single most vexing problem. However, it may be news to learn that acquaintance rape is typically one more harmful manifestation of student drinking. In a survey of 12,000 students nationwide, more than two out of three students who committed sexually related crimes were reported by the victims to be using alcohol, other drugs, or both at the time of the crime. In another study, more than half the male students who admitted to having committed sexual assault said they had been drinking or using other drugs before the crime; one in four admitted to being moderately or extremely intoxicated.1 Usually, the victim has been drinking, too. According to a 1989 study, nearly three out of four women who were victims of sexual assault had been using alcohol around the time of the incident. In an earlier study, more than half the women had been drinking or using other drugs, with one in five admitting they had been moderately or extremely intoxicated.2 "The connection between alcohol and violence is so closely interwoven that it is often difficult to separate the two. College administrators must face the stark reality that the vast majority of violence occurring on college campuses is the result of alcohol misuse by our own students." - Jeanine Beratta, Assistant Director for Judicial Affairs, Northeastern University Other data corroborate the close link between drinking and acquaintance rape: -over 500 deans of students and security chiefs from a random sample of 347 four-year public and private institutions reported that alcohol contributed to nearly three-quarters of the sexual assaults among their students;3 and -a statistical analysis of more than 800 liability claims against fraternities found that drinking was involved in 97 percent of all sexual abuse incidents.4 In light of these facts, reducing student misuse of alcohol, particularly binge drinking, is likely to be the single most effective approach to preventing acquaintance rape. Why Should Top Administrators Get Involved? Why should a college or university president, vice president, or dean provide resources for preventing acquaintance rape? First, Federal Law Requires Action The Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act of 1990 (34 CFR Part 668) requires every institution of higher education to -develop and distribute to students and employees, and, upon request, to applicants for enrollment or employment, a statement of policy regarding the school's campus sexual assault education and prevention programs; -distribute procedures for on-campus disciplinary action and possible sanctions for sex offenders; and -make timely reports to the campus community on any reported crimes that may be a threat to other students in order to prevent similar occurrences. The Drug-Free Schools and Campuses Act, codified as Part 86 of EDGAR (34 CFR Part 86), requires that every institution of higher education enact policies to prevent the unlawful possession, use, or distribution of alcohol and illicit drugs by students and employees. Under the regulations, schools must distribute written information every year that includes -a description of the health risks associated with the use of alcohol and illicit drugs; -a description of any drug or alcohol counseling, treatment, or rehabilitation programs available to students and employees; -standards of conduct that clearly prohibit the unlawful possession, use, or distribution of alcohol and illicit drugs by students and employees on school property or as part of any school activities; -a description of the applicable legal sanctions under local, state, or federal law for the unlawful possession or distribution of alcohol and illicit drugs; -a clear statement that the school will impose disciplinary sanctions on students and employees who violate the standards of conduct; and - description of the school's sanctions, up to, and including, expulsion, termination of employment, and referral to local law enforcement. The regulations also require schools to prepare a written review of their program every two years to -determine its effectiveness and implement any needed changes; and -ensure that the school's sanctions are consistently enforced. The written biennial review must be made available to anyone who asks for a copy. These statutory obligations require colleges to initiate specific and comprehensive steps to prevent both acquaintance rape and its ally, illegal and abusive drinking. If schools fail to act, they face possible government sanctions and provide a possible cause of legal action to victimized students. Second, Acquaintance Rape Causes Serious Harm to Schools Acquaintance rape can have severe consequences for schools, from damaged reputations to major financial losses. A prominent university in the Northeast was acutely embarrassed by the national media attention that resulted when women began writing the names of alleged rapists on bathroom walls and called in The New York Times to cover the story. Negative publicity from the problem can, in turn, affect the school's bottom line: -Money Guide: Best College Buys now suggests that, in deciding where to apply to college, students and their parents investigate and consider campus crime rates and the seriousness of the school's efforts to prevent crime. -According to Teresa Awalt of Towson State University's National Campus Violence Prevention Center, some parents are requesting campus crime statistics and giving them as much weight as academic reputation in choosing a school.5 Perhaps most harmful of all are lawsuits against schools, which can combine the twin calamities of negative public relations and financial loss. Courts have made clear in recent years that it is both unrealistic and inappropriate to expect college administrators to control their students' private behavior,6 thereby bringing to a close the era of in loco parentis which had made schools responsible for injuries that students inflicted on each other because the youths were minors living away from their legal guardians. However, as property owners, schools still have a legal duty to maintain a safe campus. Accordingly, a school may be liable "if it fails to remedy a foreseeable dangerous state of affairs of which it is, or should be, aware."7 In practical terms, this legal duty means that -if a school knows that alcohol is being served or consumed on its premises, the school has a duty to properly police the place or the event where alcohol is consumed; -if alcohol-related problems, such as acquaintance rape, occur at predictable times and places, the school must make reasonable efforts to prevent a recurrence; and -the school may be liable if it fails to deal effectively with repeat student offenders, including rapists, whose conduct eventually results in more damage. While all schools carry liability insurance, their insurance policy may not cover failure to provide a safe environment. Depending on the school's loss history, subsequent years' insurance premiums may increase or the insurance policy may be canceled. In any case, insurance does not cover punitive damages. Whether a school wins or loses these cases, the expense of litigation can be enormous, even when schools settle out of court. Furthermore, the negative publicity from a court case may cause alumni contributions and student applications to decline. Top administrators who see to it that their institution develops reasonable policies and procedures for handling allegations of acquaintance rape and who assure consistent implementation of these policies can help protect the school from lawsuits by victims - and by alleged assailants. Third, Acquaintance Rape Is a Major Problem at Many Schools Rape is the most common violent crime committed on college campuses. A 1985 survey of 6,159 students from 32 colleges and universities found that -one out of every six female students reported they had been a victim of rape or attempted rape during the preceding year; -one out of every 15 male students admitted they had raped, or tried to rape, a female student during the preceding year; and -more than 8 out of 10 victims knew the rapist.9 The problem is even more severe than these figures suggest, because students frequently do not report attempted or completed acquaintance rapes - or even define what happened to them as rape. In addition, many women who have been raped drop out of school.10 In every classroom with 50 female students, there are, on average, 6 to 7 women who, in the past year, have been victims of rape or attempted rape by someone they knew. Many people do not realize - or do not want to admit - that acquaintance rape usually results in profound temporary or lasting emotional scarring of the victim. Women raped by men they know suffer the same psychological injuries as women raped by strangers.11 The immediate anguish and fear experienced by college women who are raped by another student may not subside for some time, in part because they may continue to see the rapist on campus or even in the same residence hall.12 They may be fearful that they will be raped again. Rape may also result in an unwanted pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease. All these considerations may make it difficult for the victim to focus on her school work; as a result, her academic performance may suffer. By addressing acquaintance rape, top school administrators can help meet their obligation to provide a safe environment in which students can learn. Finally, colleges and universities have an ethical obligation to speak out against this particularly pernicious form of interpersonal violence that affects not only its victims but also other students, faculty, and parents. The public has become increasingly cynical about the motivations of many of its political, business, and educational leaders, and about their alleged loss of values. Even if there were no compelling reasons of self-interest for taking firm action to prevent acquaintance rape, presidents, vice presidents, and deans should take a firm stand against this crime because it is the right thing to do. What Can Top Administrators Do? Presidents, vice presidents, and deans can provide several types of essential support for preventing acquaintance rape. Establish and Enforce Firm Penalties for Acquaintance Rape When school administrators fail to punish acquaintance rape and, in effect, ignore the problem, they perpetuate dangerous attitudes about rape - in particular, that drinking and sex go together, that forcing a woman to have sex is acceptable, and that the school does not care about the problem. As a result, acquaintance rape may continue unabated or, even worse, may escalate. An absolutely essential step for changing campus norms about acquaintance rape is for the president to establish policies that make sexual assault a behavior that will not be tolerated and will be punished sternly. The president then needs to publicize the policies personally, vocally, and repeatedly. For example, the president of the University of Virginia published a letter condemning acquaintance rape in the school newspaper (shown on the next page) along with a discussion (not shown) of what constitutes acquaintance rape. School administrators must follow through on their policy statements by making sure that -every student becomes familiar with the policies; -the policies are enforced; -violators are punished sternly and consistently; and -the violations and punishments are reported widely. "While most university administrators agree that institutions need to develop community standards [for violence by students], few are willing to seriously hold students accountable for their behavior through separation from the institution." - Jeanine Beratta, Assistant Director for Judicial Life, Northeastern University Suspending or expelling students who commit acquaintance rape can be especially effective in reducing the problem because a student who commits one acquaintance rape is likely to commit others.13 Provide Adequate Levels of Material Support for Prevention Top administrators need to show support by providing adequate levels of funding, space, staffing, and other assistance to the prevention program. People at most institutions tend to discount statements of support from the top, no matter how forceful, that are unaccompanied by concrete assistance. Administrators who believe in a program provide for it. The direct financial support need not be major; even a small amount of money can help the program accomplish a lot and demonstrate the school's commitment to solving the problem. (See the box on page 7.) Administrators can also demonstrate support for the program by ensuring that it is housed administratively in a school department or division which will give it extra credibility and access to sources of assistance. Help Arrange for All Pertinent Campus Segments To Collaborate in the Effort To be effective, an acquaintance rape prevention program needs the active cooperation of all sectors of the school, from the athletic department to campus security to health services. However, heads of some of these departments may be reluctant to join the effort. Presidents, vice presidents, and deans can be influential in assuring that all these mid-level administrators are involved with the prevention program. It is particularly important for top administrators to help the program gain access to residence halls, fraternities and sororities, athletic teams, incoming students during orientation, and classrooms. Commitment from top-level administrators is especially critical for mandating student participation in acquaintance rape workshops. Many school departments, residence hall advisors, fraternity and sorority chapters, and athletic departments may not agree on their own to require participation. Only required participation ensures that every student will be exposed to acquaintance rape programming at least once. Make Sure the Program Includes the Elements of Success Top administrators need to ensure that three key features are included in their school's effort to prevent acquaintance rape: (1) Make sure the program implements a variety of approaches to reaching and educating students. Only multiple interventions involving all student populations in repeated and mutually reinforcing exposure to the issue of acquaintance rape are capable of changing campus norms in a manner that will lead to widespread behavior change. (2) Make sure the program trains students to lead workshops for other students. Acquaintance rape prevention programming is likely to be most effective if trained peer facilitators, rather than staff, run the workshops. (3) See to it that the program is evaluated and monitored so that its effectiveness and areas of needed improvement are documented. The program will be truly effective only if careful evaluation and monitoring are conducted to reveal weaknesses that need to be corrected. (See chapter 6, "Evaluating the Program.") Give This Guide to an Appropriate Campus Leader Give this guide to a staff member who has the motivation, energy, time, and interpersonal and program leadership skills to implement the recommendations provided in the following chapters. Often, this person will be the current coordinator of the school's alcohol and other drug (AOD) prevention program. At some colleges and universities, this person may be a member of a committee that is actively involved in student life, women's affairs, or campus crime. Although funding will be difficult to arrange, it may be necessary to hire someone new as the program coordinator, even if only in a part-time position. Chapter 2 details the close link between alcohol use and acquaintance rape. Chapter 3 provides guidelines for establishing, improving, and expanding an acquaintance rape prevention program. Chapters 4 and 5 provide programmatic suggestions for preventing acquaintance rape in conjunction with reducing student alcohol misuse. Chapter 6 explains how to evaluate the program. Suggestions for additional resources are integrated throughout the guide in the footnotes, boxes (preceded by a check mark), and text, and are summarized in the appendix. The following chapters are written for program implementers. However, presidents, vice presidents, and deans are encouraged to read the chapters in order to develop a clear understanding of the comprehensive program that is required to prevent acquaintance rape. Sidebars Lawsuits Can Be Embarrassing and Expensive Four women from a college in Minnesota who were sexually assaulted by two male students after the college already knew the men were rapists sued the school for not acting in a responsible manner to protect other women on campus from the men. After a long and costly legal battle, the college settled the case out of court in 1991 for an undisclosed amount. ---------- Administrator Support Can Bring Positive Publicity Attending to the acquaintance rape problem can be good for business. Forbes Magazine's 1991 Best Schools issue highlighted Cornell's rape prevention program as evidence of the university's concern for student welfare. ------------ Stockton State College Responds Firmly and Swiftly At Stockton State College in Pomona, New Jersey, a hearing board composed exclusively of administrators hears all sexual assault cases in which the alleged offender is accused of what the criminal law considers a felony. Less serious violations are heard by a panel that includes students. The two-tier system results in more convictions for students accused of acquaintance rape, because students are sometimes reluctant to find other students responsible for the crime. The board often drops its other work to hear the case within one week of the accusation and removes the accused student immediately from the school for the duration of the investigation. As a result, the victim has less reason to fear contact with the alleged assailant. Any student found responsible for acquaintance rape is suspended or expelled immediately. - Carol Bohmer and Andrea Parrot. Sexual Assault on Campus: The Problem and the Solution. New York: Lexington Books, 1993. -------------- Inexpensive Ways Administrators Can Provide Support -reassign existing staff to the program or spend the monies budgeted for an unfilled staff position on the acquaintance rape program -assign someone to help the program identify potential sources of funding outside the school, including the federal government, the Foundation Center, and Funders Concerned About Alcohol and Substance Abuse -assist in establishing a program endowment, as was done by Northern Arizona University, and help to secure gifts from alumni and parents -arrange for a portion of student service fees, student health fees, parking fees, or charges for registering on-campus parties to be used to underwrite the program - the alcohol prevention program at the University of North Texas relies entirely on student service fees -arrange for fines assessed against students who violate college drinking rules to be directed to the acquaintance rape program -------------- A Harmless Rite of Passage? Sometimes administrators excuse violent behavior by students on the grounds that, because the students were under the influence of alcohol at the time, they should not be held responsible. Students, too, often make this claim. According to Jeanine Beratta, Assistant Director for Judicial Affairs at Northeastern University, "Despite the serious and well-known consequences of certain behavior, a number of students who were separated [from the school] maintained the stance that they were not able to control their use of alcohol." Beratta counters, "Students must be held accountable for their actions, regardless of the amount of alcohol [they have] consumed." Reflecting this attitude, the policies and regulations of Ferris State University in Michigan declare that "Use or abuse of alcohol or other drugs does not diminish the assailant's personal responsibility or disciplinary sanctions." --------------- Endnotes 1. Bausell, R.B.; Bausell, C.R.; and Siegel, D.G. The Links Among Alcohol, Drugs and Crime on American College Campuses: A National Followup Study. Unpublished report by the Towson State University Campus Violence Prevention Center, Towson, Maryland, 1994; Muehlenhard, C.L., and Linton, M.A. Date rape and sexual aggression in dating situations: Incidence and risk factors. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 1987, 55:162-170. For a review of the literature, see Berkowitz, A. College men as perpetrators of acquaintance rape and sexual assault: A review of recent research. Journal of American College Health, 1992, 40:175-180. 2. Bausell et al., The Links Among Alcohol, Drugs and Crime; Muehlenhard and Linton, Date rape and sexual aggression. See also, Miller, B., and Marshall, J.C. Coercive sex on the university campus. Journal of College Student Personnel, 1987, 28:28-47. 3. Unpublished survey conducted by the Harvard University School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, 1993. 4. Harris and Harris of Kentucky, Inc. Fraternity Claims Analysis: 1987-1992. 2nd Edition. Louisville, Kentucky, Author, 1993. 5. The New York Times, September 7, 1994. 6. See, for example, Eiseman v. State of New York, 70 N.Y.2d 1975; 511 N.E.2d 1128; 518 N.Y.S.2d 608 (Ct. App. 1987) and Tanja H. v. The Regents of the University of California, 228 Cal. App. 3d 434; 1991 Cal. App. LEXIS 228; 278 Cal. Rptr. 918; 91 Cal. Daily Op. Service 1809; Daily Journal (Ct. App. 1st App. Dist., Div. Two, 1991). 7. American Council on Education. Institutional Liability for Alcohol Consumption: A White Paper on Institutional Liability for Consumption of Alcohol and Drugs on Campus. Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1992. 8. A few men accused of acquaintance rape have successfully sued their schools, seeking a new campus hearing, reinstatement in school, or monetary damages, usually on the grounds that the school's disciplinary procedures failed to provide due process. 9. Koss, M.P; Gidycz, C.A.; and Wisnewski, N. The scope of rape: Incidence and prevalence of sexual aggression and victimization in a national sample of higher education students. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1987, 55:162-170; Koss, M.P., and Dinero, T.E. Discriminant analysis of the risk factors for sexual victimization among a national sample of college women. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1989, 57:242-250. 10. Koss, M.P. The hidden rape victim: personality, attitudinal, and situational characteristics. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 1985, 9:193-212; Koss, M.P.; Dinero, T.E.; Seibel, C.; and Cox, S. Stranger, acquaintance, and date rape: Is there a difference in the victim's experience? Psychology of Women Quarterly, 1988, 12:1-24. 11. Parrot, A. Acquaintance Rape and Sexual Assault Prevention Training Manual. Fourth Edition. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, Department of Human Ecology, 1990; Koss, M.P., and Burkhart, B.R. The long- term impact of rape: A conceptual model and implications for treatment. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 1989, 13:133-147; Warshaw, R. I Never Called It Rape. Harper & Row: New York, 1988, pp. 65-82. 12. Siegel, D. Campuses Respond to Violent Tragedy. Phoenix, Arizona: The Oryx Press, 1994. 13. Bohmer and Parrot, Sexual Assault on Campus. Chapter 2 Drinking and Acquaintance Rape on Campus Chapter Summary · Acquaintance rape - forced sexual intercourse between individuals who know each other - is a crime that is widespread on many college and university campuses. · Usually, both parties involved in acquaintance rape have been drinking - often to excess. · Research has not yet explained how and why alcohol is related to aggression in general or to acquaintance rape in particular. This chapter explains the nature of the links between drinking and acquaintance rape. The previous chapter was written primarily for presidents, vice presidents, and deans. However, program coordinators and other readers who are not top administrators at their schools will still find it beneficial to read the previous chapter before turning to this chapter and the following chapters. While written primarily for top administrators, the previous chapter provides useful discussion points that program coordinators and planning committee members can use as they collaborate with the president and other high-level school officials to make the prevention program a success. A few short sections of the previous chapter are repeated in the present chapter. Before proceeding further, the reader should also be aware of three other features of this guide. -Many college women are the victims of unwanted touching and sexual harassment. Sexual harassment includes intimidating sexual advances and persistent, unwanted requests for sexual favors. However, this guide focuses exclusively on acquaintance rape. -Occasionally, men can be coerced by women into forced sex. Same-sex relationships may also involve rape. However, the vast majority of acquaintance rapes on campus are committed by men against women. As a result, this guide refers to offenders as he and to victims as she. -Some people use the expression date rape to refer to rape between people who know each other. This guide avoids the expression because the words suggest that sexual assaults occur only on formal dates or between people in a courtship relationship, whereas many of these assaults occur during or after parties between students who are not dating. What Is Acquaintance Rape? Although the law uses more formal language, it generally defines rape as forcing a person to have sexual intercourse - whether vaginal, oral, or anal - against her will. Typically, the rapist uses force or threatens to harm the victim.1 Although some student rapes are committed by strangers, the vast majority of sexual assaults at nearly every school are perpetrated by someone the victim knows.2 These assaults are called acquaintance rapes. When a man forces another person into having sexual intercourse, he is subject to the same criminal penalties whether he is acquainted with the victim or is a total stranger - and whether or not either party is intoxicated. Acquaintance Rape Is Widespread at Most Schools Rape is the most common violent crime committed on college campuses. In a 1985 survey of 6,159 students from 32 colleges and universities, one out of every six female students reported they had been a victim of rape, or attempted rape, during the preceding year. One out of every 15 male students admitted they had raped, or tried to rape, a female student during the preceding year. More than 8 out of 10 victims knew the rapist.3 In every classroom with 50 female students, there are, on average, 6 to 7 women who, in the past year, have been victims of rape or attempted rape by someone they knew. These numbers underreport the severity of the problem because students frequently do not report attempted or completed acquaintance rapes. They are afraid the offender can take revenge if they report the crime because he can easily find them. Sometimes women do not realize, or are not sure, that the man's behavior constituted rape. Women may also be afraid they will not be believed, think (often correctly) that school and police officials will not do much to punish the rapist, or blame themselves for allowing the crime to happen - especially if they had been drinking.4 In Most Acquaintance Rapes, Drinking Is Involved In a survey of more than 12,000 students nationwide, more than two out of three students who committed sexually-related crimes were reported by the victims to be using alcohol, other drugs, or both at the time of the crime. In another study, more than half the male students who admitted to having committed sexual assault said they had been drinking or using other drugs before the crime; one in four admitted to being moderately or extremely intoxicated.5 Although alcohol is by far the principal drug involved, there are documented cases of students using marijuana and cocaine before committing rape.6 Usually, the victim has been drinking, too. Nearly three out of four women who were victims of sexual assault in a 1989 study of victimized students had been using alcohol around the time of the incident. In another study, more than half the victims had been drinking or using other drugs, with one in five admitting they had been moderately or extremely intoxicated.7 At one university in New England, every assailant was under the influence of alcohol in every incident of acquaintance rape reported between 1991 and 1994. So were almost all the victims. Other data corroborate the close link between acquaintance rape and student drinking: -more than 500 deans of students and security chiefs at a random sample of 347 four-year public and private institutions reported that drinking among their students contributed to 74 percent of sexual assaults;8 and -a statistical analysis of more than 900 liability claims against fraternities found that drinking was involved in 97 percent of all sexual abuse incidents.9 Background to the Alcohol-Violence Link Any discussion of acquaintance rape benefits from a larger discussion of alcohol and aggression. Alcohol is the only psychoactive drug that in many individuals tends to increase aggressive behavior while it is taking effect. For at least several decades, drinking has immediately preceded at least half of all violent events.10 Despite overwhelming evidence that drinking and aggression are related, how aggression is influenced by alcohol use is not well understood.11 There is only limited evidence that alcohol itself is a direct, pharmacological cause of aggression.12 (If alcohol caused violent behavior only by making individuals behave more aggressively, violence would be equally common in all places where drinking, and especially intoxication, occurs.) Research on the relationship between drinking and aggression has consistently found a complex relation that is mediated by several factors: -the drinker's personality (such as, the person's tendency to use personal power in an overt manner); -his or her expectations about the effects drinking will have; -situational factors in the settings where drinking occurs, especially the number of people present and the nature of their relationships (intimate, familiar, adversarial); -the drinker's beliefs about what is accepted, tolerated, or encouraged behavior in the situation; and -sociocultural factors (such as peer approval for "scoring" under any circumstances) that channel any arousal stimulated by alcohol into behaviors that may include aggression. There are a number of potential explanations for the relationship between acquaintance rape and alcohol use. Alcohol reduces inhibitions many men may have about forcing sex on women. Alcohol - or just the act of drinking regardless of any physiological effect the ethanol may have - may make men feel more sexually aroused. (Some men who think they have been consuming alcohol but were given a placebo report being more sexually aroused than before they started "drinking13.") Social expectations may be at work; that is, young men who expect to have sex after drinking may try to satisfy their expectations, sometimes forcibly if they encounter resistance.14 In addition, the situations in which acquaintance rape takes place on many campuses - fraternity parties, for example - often involve both tremendous permissiveness and peer pressure to "score." Some college students drink purposely to facilitate their sexual encounters.15 Alcohol helps some men excuse or justify their use of force. Many sober men tend to misinterpret friendly cues from women as a sign of interest in having sex; alcohol may enable men to misinterpret these cues even more.16 Whatever the reasons, there is no question that drinking is usually associated with acquaintance rape. As a result, addressing the rape problem must involve focusing on alcohol use if this crime is to be prevented to the fullest extent possible. Side Bars Literature on Acquaintance Rape · The footnotes in chapter 2 include many of the major scientific or scholarly studies of acquaintance rape. · Additional studies are described in Acquaintance Rape: An Annotated Bibliography by Sally D. Ward, Jennifer D. Leather, Jane G. Stapleton, and Carrie L. Yodanis. Lengthy annotations present the purpose, method, and findings for each publication reviewed. $55.00. Available from Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, P.O. Box 5007, Westport, Connecticut, (203) 226- 3571. ----------------- Drinking May Also Make Women More Vulnerable Already at a disadvantage because they are not as physically strong as most men, women also weaken their ability to assess dangerous situations and to safeguard themselves if they drink too much. In addition, many male students assume that a female student who drinks wants to have sex or that it is acceptable to force sex on a drunk female acquaintance. - Aileen Adams and Gail Abarbanel. Sexual Assault on Campus: What Colleges Can Do. Santa Monica, California: Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center, Rape Treatment Center, 1988; Antonia Abbey. Acquaintance rape and alcohol consumption on college campuses: How are they linked? Journal of American College Health, 1991, 39: 165-169; Timothy M. Rivinus and Mary E. Larimer. Violence, Alcohol, other Drugs, and the College Student. In Leighton C. Whitaker and Jeffrey W. Pollard (eds), Campus Violence: Kinds, Causes, and Cures. New York: Haworth Press, 1993, pp. 71-119. -------------- Endnotes 1. Adams, A., and Abarbanel, G. Sexual Assault on Campus: What Colleges Can Do. Santa Monica, California: Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center Rape Treatment Center, 1988. 2. Koss, M.P.; Gidycz, C.A.; and Wisnewski, N. The scope of rape: Incidence and prevalence of sexual aggression and victimization in a national sample of higher education students. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1987, 55:162-170; Bausell, R., Bausell, R., and Siegel, G. The Links Among Alcohol, Drugs and Crime on American College Campuses: A National Followup Study. Unpublished report by the Towson State University Campus Violence Prevention Center, Towson, Maryland, 1994. 3. Adams and Abarbanel. Sexual Assault on Campus; Koss et al., The scope of rape. 4. Koss, M.P.; Dinero, T.E.; Seibel, C.; and Cox, S. Stranger, acquaintance, and date rape: Is there a difference in the victim's experience? Psychology of Women Quarterly, 1988, 12:1-24. 5. Bausell et al., The Links Among Alcohol, Drugs and Crime; Muehlenhard, C.L., and Linton, M.A. Date rape and sexual aggression in dating situations: Incidence and risk factors. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 1987, 55:162-170. See also, Berkowitz, A. College men as perpetrators of acquaintance rape and sexual assault: A review of recent research. Journal of American College Health, 1992, 40:175-180. 6. Koss et al., The scope of rape; Bausell et al., The Links Among Alcohol, Drugs and Crime. 7. Bausell et al., The Links Among Alcohol, Drugs and Crime; Muehlenhard and Linton, Date Rape and Sexual Aggression. See also, Miller, B., and Marshall, J.C. Coercive sex on the university campus. Journal of College Student Personnel, 1987, 28: 28-47. 8. Unpublished survey conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, 1993. 9. Harris and Harris of Kentucky, Inc. Fraternity Claims Analysis: 1987-1992. 2nd Edition. Louisville, Kentucky, Author, 1993. 10. Roth, J.A. Psychoactive Substances and Violence. A Research in Brief. Washington, D.C.: The National Institute of Justice, 1994. 11. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Eighth Special Report to the U.S. Congress on Alcohol and Health. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1993, p. 246. 12. Fagan, J. Intoxication and Aggression. In Tonry, M., and Wilson, J.Q. (eds.). Drugs and Crime. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990, pp. 241-320. 13. Abbey, A. Acquaintance rape and alcohol consumption on college campuses: How are they linked? Journal of American College Health, 1991, 39: 165-169. 14. Roth, Psychoactive Substances and Violence. 15. Meilman, P.W. Alcohol-induced sexual behavior on campus. Journal of American College Health, 1993, 42:27-31. 16. Adams and Abarbanel, Sexual Assault on Campus; Abbey, A., Acquaintance rape and alcohol consumption. Chapter 3 Implementing or Improving an Acquaintance Rape Prevention Program Chapter Summary · Coordinators and planning committees should conduct 16 important steps for implementing a new acquaintance rape program. · Coordinators of programs that are operational, but incomplete, can benefit from reviewing these steps to determine which ones the program has yet to implement. The coordinator can also implement all pertinent steps each time the program develops a new activity or service. · Coordinators of fully mature programs can review the implementation steps to determine whether all of the specific subtasks involved in the execution of each step have been carried out. The most frequently omitted but critically important implementation steps are to -conduct a needs assessment; -develop a public relations plan; -secure allies; and -evaluate the program. · Gaining the support of top school administrators is an especially important but difficult task that requires creativity and constant attention. The first section of this chapter reviews the principal components of an implementation plan for establishing or expanding an acquaintance rape prevention program. The second section presents examples of how program staff have carried out one particularly crucial implementation step: collaboration with top school administrators. The third section considers how schools that are at very different stages in their development of acquaintance rape prevention programming can use this guide to begin, improve, or expand their efforts. The section suggests that program coordinators and planners should determine where they are on the continuum of program development, from not having initiated any planning effort to having a well-developed program. After reviewing the planning steps discussed in the first two sections of this chapter, coordinators and planners can then consider how, given their program's stage of development, they need to proceed. Principal Implementation Steps The implementation steps described below are discussed in approximate chronological order. The following page presents the steps in an illustrative checklist that can be used as a template for a definitive checklist that reflects each school's stage of program development and local conditions. The numbers in parentheses after some of the steps in the checklist and text indicate pages of the guide where actual school experiences with these implementation steps are discussed. The checklist may also be used for preparing a status report on an existing program's stage of development and as an evaluation tool. Program coordinators and planning committees may need to skip some of the steps, implement some of them simultaneously, conduct them in a different sequence, or conduct them continually. For example, Gaining the Support of Top Administrators (task 9) might not normally begin in earnest until after Identifying Needed Resources (task 8). However, it is possible to begin to gain the support of top administrators either while Forming a Planning Team (task 2) - by trying to enlist a top administrator or while Conducting the Needs Assessment (task 4) - by interviewing top administrators about their perceptions of needs. Similarly, Developing a Public Relations Plan (task 10) can begin either while Forming a Planning Committee (task 2) - by publicizing the planned program as the committee is being formed - or while Conducting the Needs Assessment (task 4) - by using the assessment as a means of informing people about the planned program. 1. Identify Like-Minded People Begin by finding other individuals on and off campus who have an interest in the problem of acquaintance rape, or who, with some information, are likely to develop a concern. Enlist their support for the program and consult with them about how to conduct the remaining implementation steps involved in setting up, improving, or expanding the program. Potentially interested and helpful people might include the school president, dean of residential life, head of campus security, director of health services, a staff person from the local rape crisis center or task force for battered women, and town or city officials, including the police chief and mayor or selectmen. Include key student leaders, as well. Call on these individuals in particular for help in step 3, Developing a Program Implementation Plan. 2. Form (or Use an Existing) Policy and Planning Team Involve several people in the development of the plan, including other administrators, faculty, and students. Some of the concerned people who were identified in task 1 above may make good candidates for the team. Try to include individuals who represent groups that might help implement the program (such as the dean of residential life, a varsity coach, a residence hall advisor) and some students (such as fraternity members, varsity athletes, concerned women). Involve people who will be able to give continuing, not just initial, advice on how to proceed. If there is an existing committee on campus which is already addressing a problem that is related to acquaintance rape, such as an AOD committee, campus crime committee, or student wellness committee, it may be feasible to arrange for one of these existing committees to form a subcommittee to serve as the policy and planning team as long as appropriate individuals are already represented on the committee or can be added to it. 3. Develop an Implementation Plan An implementation plan lists in approximate chronological order all the steps or tasks that must be taken to set up, improve, or expand a program. At a minimum, the plan should contain -a description of the tasks to be performed; -the dates each task needs to begin and be completed (sometimes called milestones); -the names of the people responsible for each task and the amount of time they will be expected to devote to it; -a list of any resources needed to complete each task and an explanation of how they will be secured; and -a review of usable resources related to acquaintance rape that have been developed at other schools (such as the materials referenced throughout this publication and summarized in the appendix). 4. Conduct a Needs Assessment Whether instituting a new program or expanding an existing one, it is important to conduct a needs assessment to determine the nature and severity of the acquaintance rape problem at the school. Without knowing the nature of the problem (for example, where acquaintance rapes are occurring most often), it is impossible to decide how to prevent it. Data from the needs assessment can also help in convincing top administrators to provide support. Finally, a baseline needs assessment is a necessary first step in conducting an evaluation of a program's effectiveness: knowledge of conditions before the program begins or before it introduces a new activity is necessary to determine later whether the problem has declined. (See chapter 6, Evaluating the Program.) "I conducted a survey that showed that 30 percent of students had experienced sexual assaults on campus, and I presented the data to the provost as one reason to expand our program." - Myra Hindus, Director of the Women's Center, University of Connecticut The needs assessment should include -a survey of students to determine the magnitude and nature of the problem, their perception of how serious it is, and their suggestions for preventing it; -a review of the school's rules about sexual assault, the enforcement of these rules, and other aspects of the college environment that might be contributing to the problem; and -a review of other existing prevention efforts on campus and what factors have contributed to their success or failure. 5. Select Target Audiences Chapters 4 and 5 identify several subpopulations of students the program can target, including Greeks, athletes, and foreign students (see pages 29-33 and 44-45). The program coordinator needs to develop criteria for deciding which of these groups to address. These criteria might include -the extent of the groups' involvement in acquaintance rape and excessive drinking; -its accessibility (e.g., the group is a captive audience, or members can be recruited easily on a voluntary basis to participate); and -the group's susceptibility to changing its undesirable behavior. 6. Select Interventions Selecting interventions to include in, or add to, the program involves -choosing general programming activities (such as presentations at orientation, in residence halls, to athletic teams, and to Greeks [see pages 28-36]); -selecting the types of presentations to provide (for example, sex-segregated or mixed groups [see page 48]); -determining the content of the presentations (see pages 41-44); -selecting approaches and materials (e.g., student facilitation, videos [see pages 45-47]); and -pilot testing each intervention. With regard to the last step, program planners need to test with a small sample of the target audience each activity they plan to implement. For example, if the program plans to develop peer-led workshops for students in residence halls, planners need to design a preliminary workshop plan, train one or two students in its implementation, and arrange for the peer educators to present it to a small group of students in a residence hall. Provide the participating residence hall students with a pre-post questionnaire and conduct a follow-up discussion with them regarding the workshop's effectiveness and how it could be improved. Having conducted a pilot test of each intervention will strengthen the program planners' case for gaining top administration support for the full-fledged program (see step 9 below). 7. Develop Procedures for Using Student Facilitators If students will be delivering presentations or workshops, decide how many students to recruit, develop criteria for selecting them, identify what they will be responsible for doing, and develop a recruitment plan, training plan, and monitoring protocol (see pages 47-52). 8. Identify Needed Resources Decide what staff, money, and materials (such as computers, desks, and telephone lines) will be needed to implement or expand the program. Although the school will probably be the first target for trying to secure or expand funding, identify other potential sources of money. The school is unlikely to provide all the funds the program may need, and eventually it may reduce or cancel its support. In addition to working with the school's development office to submit grant proposals, consider -developing a program endowment using gifts from alumni, parents, and foundations; -proposing the use of student services, parking, or health fees, or registration fees imposed for on-campus parties, to underwrite part of the program; -asking that the fines collected from students who violate college rules related to alcohol possession or use be given to the program; and -proposing that money budgeted for a staff position that will remain unfilled for a known period of time be allocated to the program. 9. Gain Support from Top Administration Do not necessarily wait until this point to begin seeking support from high administration officials. However, the case for supporting the program can probably be presented more convincingly to administrators if the previous steps have already been completed. Because this step is so critical, the second section of this chapter (pages 21-22) provides illustrations of how several program coordinators and planning teams have gone about enlisting top administrator support. 10. Develop a Public Relations Plan Gaining support from top administrators is one thing; keeping that support over time, and expanding it to administrators in other school departments and offices, requires ongoing attention. Consider integrating the following public relations activities into whatever public relations program already exists for prevention programming: - and easily read reports of one or two pages that highlight the program's activities and accomplishments. -Provide opportunities for top administrators to participate in publicity events, such as introducing an event or a guest speaker. -Use a mix of brochures, bulletins, posters, newspaper columns, letters to the editor, and other media approaches to increase campus awareness of the program. -Try to locate or relocate the program so that it is physically close to important sources of support (for example, near the dean of residential life). 11. Decide How to Market the Program In addition to establishing, maintaining, and improving the program's visibility with school officials, decide how to motivate students to attend presentations if the school refuses to make participation mandatory (see pages 37-39). 12. Secure and Educate Allies Identify potential collaborators both on and off campus, decide what kind of support each collaborator can best provide, and then gain their cooperation. Involve as many segments of the college community as possible, including athletics, health services, student activities, residence life, and campus security. Bringing together all segments of the school is valuable for several reasons: -Other college officials can share their knowledge and expertise about campus conditions and effective programming. -It may be possible to fund some prevention activities jointly. -Collaboration shows people who are reluctant to tackle difficult issues because they think they are alone that others share their concern and willingness to act. -Involving other segments of the school community creates a pool of strategically placed officials who, having gained first-hand experience with the program, are likely to urge top administrators to preserve it if the program's existence is jeopardized later. A final reason to involve people from all segments of the school, according to Andrea Parrot, Associate Professor at Cornell University, is that as the program becomes operational, expands, or improves, students will be approaching these individuals to report an acquaintance rape or to seek assistance in preventing a problem in a residence hall, in a fraternity, on an athletic team, or at some other location. The people on campus to whom these students will be turning for help need to understand the nature of the problem, know how to avoid engaging in victim blaming, and be familiar with appropriate resources to offer the students. The program is in the best position to train faculty, coaches, Greek advisors, residence hall advisors, and other campus groups in how to respond to students in this supportive manner. 13. Evaluate the Program or New Services Evaluating and monitoring the program, or the additions that are made to it, involves three steps. First, as noted in the needs assessment step above, evaluation begins with a baseline assessment to determine the extent of the acquaintance rape problem on campus (including related activity such as binge drinking) before the program or new intervention becomes operational. Second, the impact of the program or new activity, and the program's operations, need to be reassessed periodically over the life of the program. Third, the results of evaluation and monitoring should be used to make improvements in the program. Because evaluation and monitoring are such important but neglected features of most school programs, chapter 6 on pages 53-66 provides a road map for how to do them. 14. Train the Peer Facilitators If the program plans to use students as workshop facilitators, this is the time to recruit and train them (see pages 49-51). 15. Announce the Program (or New Activity) and Recruit the Target Audience At this point, the program can publicize its services or new activities to students and the rest of the school and solicit requests for the program's services. 16. Work to Change School Policies Concurrently with other efforts, the program coordinator can work with school officials to have any inadequate school policies on acquaintance rape and drinking strengthened and ensure that the policies are consistently and strictly enforced (see pages 33-35). Gaining Support from Top Officials The executive summary of this guide is directed specifically at school presidents, vice presidents, and deans in an effort to explain the magnitude of the acquaintance rape problem, discuss why top administrators should support programming to prevent the problem, and suggest the types of support these administrators can provide. However, program coordinators and policy and planning committees may need to engage in efforts of their own to gain, expand, and maintain meaningful collaboration from these key individuals. Support can take many forms: public recognition, money, staff, equipment, space, and entrŽe to orientation activities, athletic teams, Greek chapters, and other events and groups. To secure this support, the program coordinator or planning team needs to have the ear of at least one top college official who will be an advocate for the program, is committed to its survival, and understands how it relates closely to different parts of college life, from admissions to athletics. The work of the program coordinator or planning team, particularly in gaining the support of other campus groups, will be facilitated enormously if the entire college community is aware that the program has this high level of backing. The discussion below illustrates how several schools have gone about obtaining this support. Chapter 1 suggests still other approaches to enlisting the support of top administrators. Methods of Gaining Support A common method by which programs gain administration support is through the persistence of a single committed faculty or staff member - or group of dedicated students - who will not take no for an answer. For example, it was largely the tenacious efforts of Andrea Parrot, a faculty member at Cornell University, that led to the establishment of the Acquaintance Rape Education (CARE) group. Parrot met with an assistant dean of students and a member of the theater arts department to develop an interactive theatre program on the problem and to organize CARE. She then arranged for several meetings with the president to ask for official recognition to give the program credibility. The president eventually agreed to make CARE an advisory committee to the vice president for human relations. Later, CARE wrote a job description for a rape education coordinator, and Parrot went back to the president to ask him to fund the position. It took two years, and he would not fund a full- time position, but he eventually agreed to fund a position whose job description included teaching about other sex education topics (e.g., safe sex) as well as sexual assault. Another way to generate support from the top is through campus groups that are sympathetic to the problem of acquaintance rape and also have access to high-level administrators. The University of Virginia's Women's Concerns Committee composed of faculty and staff has some powerful members who have the ear of top administrators. By securing the committee's support, the school's Sexual Assault Education Office was able to help prevent the loss of program funding. (A student protest that included a 134-hour sit-in at the campus rotunda and drew considerable media attention may have also helped stave off the cutbacks.) The members of Students Together Against Acquaintance Rape (STAAR) at the University of Pennsylvania used a variety of approaches to gain official recognition and support (see the box on the next page). The group's originators raised the issue by writing to the editor in the student newspaper, distributing fliers, and inviting the media to cover the issue. By maximizing every opportunity to talk about acquaintance rape, they kept the issue topical and on the minds of campus leaders. In addition, the students secured the cooperation of a number of historically antagonistic organizations, from fraternities to feminists to multicultural groups, along with various university offices. After a camera crew came to film a segment for the television program "20/20," the school president assigned a vice president to put together a universitywide task force on sexual assault. From the task force came money and staff to expand the program's activities into a campuswide effort. The Role of Crisis in Enlisting Administration Support Crises often play a decisive role in motivating school administrators to support an acquaintance rape prevention program. At the same time, faculty, mid-level administrators, and students who wish to start or expand a program can take advantage of the crisis to gain the support of school officials. In the fall of 1990, a number of students at Brown University, frustrated with the lack of an effective disciplinary system for sexual assault cases, began writing the names of men on bathroom walls who they claimed had assaulted or sexually harassed them. The rape list gained national attention after students invited The New York Times to send a reporter to the campus. The result was tremendous controversy and embarrassment for the school's administration. As a result, the president hired a consultant and formed a task force to address the problem. The result was the creation of the Sexual Assault Peer Education (SAPE) program and a mandatory orientation session for all first-year students. In addition, in the spring of 1991, the school expelled one student, suspended another for two years, and put a third on probation for four years, all for sexual misconduct. The Continuum of Program Development Schools are at very different stages in the development of their efforts to prevent acquaintance rape. Some schools have nothing in place, others have parts of a comprehensive program, and still others have a well-developed program. The flow chart on the following page illustrates the continuum of program development from the embryonic to the well developed. Readers can examine the chart to determine where they are located along the continuum and then determine, based on their stage of development, which planning steps they should implement. Schools That Have Not Begun or Are Just Beginning a Program Schools that have not yet begun an organized effort to prevent acquaintance rape should follow all of the implementation steps presented in the first section of this chapter. Schools that are just starting a program have the luxury of being able to avoid the pitfalls that some existing programs have fallen into, in particular, failing to conduct a needs assessment and not collecting baseline data for purposes of program evaluation. A new program is in the best position to follow all of the guidelines for conducting a useful evaluation presented in chapter 6. Schools With Partially Developed Programs Schools may fall in the middle of the continuum of program development in two respects. First, they may be missing significant service delivery components, such as workshops led by trained peer facilitators, student orientation activities, or special programming for fraternities and athletes. That is, their program offerings may be incomplete. Second, programs may have most or all of the desired program activities in place but they may not have conducted all the planning procedures that should be followed in choosing, establishing, and evaluating their activities. In other words, their procedures are incomplete. For example, they may have neglected to establish a policy and planning subcommittee, to conduct a needs assessment, or to collect baseline data for program evaluation. There are three ways the coordinator of an incomplete program can decide which planning steps to implement. First, identify the implementation steps that have not been conducted, and, where feasible, perform them now. For example, it is never too late - and always of value - to -establish a policy and planning subcommittee to help decide the direction the program should take by way of improvement and expansion; and -conduct a needs assessment to determine whether the program's activities are truly meeting identified needs. Second, examine the program activities presented in chapters 4 and 5 and decide which ones to add to the program's current offerings. The criteria for deciding which activities to add might include -whether they meet a significant need identified in the needs assessment; -whether the program has, or can secure, the resources necessary to implement the activities; and -the extent to which the activities will provide a significant payoff in terms of the resources required to establish and offer them. (For example, how important is it to reach athletes in relation to the amount of staff hours and program money it will take to target them?) Third, conduct, as appropriate, the implementation steps presented in this chapter whenever a new program activity or service is set up. For example, conduct a needs assessment to make sure the new program feature is needed, consult with the planning and policy team on how to set up the activity, identify the resources needed to implement it, and begin the process of evaluating its effectiveness. Schools with Well-Developed Programs Programs that have already taken the proper procedural steps can review the implementation steps presented in the first section of this chapter to determine whether staff have neglected any of the specific elements of any steps. For example, a program may have a public relations plan in place, but the plan fails to involve campus and local media. Or perhaps the program has yet to implement one or two of the approaches suggested in the previous section of this chapter for maintaining the support of top administrators. The coordinator whose program has all the desired services in place can review the activities presented in chapters 4 and 5 with an eye to identifying one or two services that might be added to the program. On the basis of this review, the coordinator can also consider changing the mix of interventions the program currently offers - that is, discontinuing one or two of its present, perhaps less effective, activities and replacing them with one of the more appealing activities described in chapters 4 and 5. Sidebars (Table) Illustrative Checklist for Tracking Implementation Progress Task Begin End Needed Date Date Staff Resources 1. Identify Like-Minded People 2. Form (or Use an Existing) Policy and Planning Team 3. Develop Implementation Plan 4. Conduct Needs Assessment 5. Select Target Audience(s) (pp. 29-31 and 44-45) 6. Select and Pilot Test Interventions (pp. 28-48) 7. Develop Procedures for Using Student Facilitators (pp. 47-52) 8. Identify Needed Resources 9. Gain Support from Top Administrators (pp. 21-22) 10. Develop Public Relations Plan 11. Decide How to Market Program (pp. 37-39) 12. Secure and Educate Allies 13. Initiate Evaluation and Monitoring (pp. 53-66) 14. Train Facilitators (pp. 49-51) 15. Announce Program or Intervention 16. Work to Change School Policies (pp. 33-35) ----------------- Assistance in Performing a Needs Assessment · Information written in lay language on how to conduct a student survey is available from the bulletin, Assessing Alcohol-Related Problems on Campus. 1995. Single copies free. Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention, 4800 Montgomery Lane, Suite 600, Bethesda, Maryland 20814, (800) 676-1730, or (301) 492-5336 in Maryland; fax (301) 718-3108. · Approaches to assessing the campus environment are described in College Alcohol Risk Assessment Guide: Environmental Approaches to Prevention, 1994. Single copies free. Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Studies, UCSD Extension, University of California, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093, (619) 458-4306. ------------- Program Coordinators' Wish Lists Most sexual assault prevention programs have only one or two part-time staff. Here is what three coordinators said they would do if they were suddenly given more money or staff: -"I would conduct focus groups with students to find out from them what kinds of prevention activities would be effective in preventing acquaintance rape." - Susan Villari of the University of Pennsylvania -"I would develop a video geared to our own campus and theater pieces conducted by professional actors and actresses. I would also use the student computer bulletin board, where rape survivors already communicate with each other, to do prevention education and advertise the program." - Myra Hindus of the University of Connecticut -"I would set up a program to train fraternity students to put on skits for fraternities, residence halls, and athletic teams. Students really enjoy these productions because they can ask questions while the actors are still in character." - Karyn Nishimura of the National Interfraternity Conference ------------- Scrounging for Additional Funds -Brown University's program charges fees for running workshops at high schools and other colleges and uses these fees to hire speakers for on-campus presentations. Any leftover money pays for sending peer facilitators to sexual assault conferences. -The University of Virginia's program persuaded the president to provide several hundred dollars for a full-page advertisement about the program in both student newspapers. -Cornell University's program obtained $1,500 from a powerful women's alumnae group (U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno is a member) for producing and printing foreign language brochures on acquaintance rape. -The Cornell program importuned various school departments for funds to produce a video. After producing the video, the program obtained additional money by offering it for sale to other schools. ------------ Sometimes the School Will Not Budge One school hired a part-time rape prevention education expert after many students became incensed at the way school officials handled a sexual assault incident. When the program documented 200 cases of acquaintance rape and sexual harassment in one year, the prevention educator and some students asked the school for an additional $18,000 to convert the position into a full-time job. School administrators responded by saying the problem was not really serious. As a result, students petitioned the president and took over his office. However, school officials continued to deny the seriousness of the problem and refused to expand the program. ------------- STAAR's Four Principles of Grassroots Organizing 1. Begin organizing around a crisis or some event which has heightened awareness on your campus. Coalitions and organizations can be formed very quickly in a time of crisis. 2. Build a coalition. Bring together groups which can work together on the issue. . . . A coalition should bring together a diverse group which can access various parts of your campus. 3. Identify key allies and resources. Identify key people in key places . . . [for] professional support and advice. At Penn, some faculty and staff were very public in their support of the program . . . . 4. Start small. Set definite goals. . . . Start with 2-3 [peer] educators, if necessary, to get started. Aim for two workshops per semester. -"Building a Community Intolerant of Rape," available from the University of Pennsylvania Office of Health Education, (215) 573-3525 ------------- Continuum of Program Development Place on Continuum Least Developed...........Partially Developed..........Well Developed Stage of operational but operational but Develop- no steps some steps additional planning refinements ment initiated begun or srvices needed needed Conduct Steps 1-16 as needed See text for discussion of each step. 1. Identify Like-Minded People 2. Form (or Use Existing) Planning Committee 3. Develop Implementation Plan 4. Conduct Needs Assessment 5. Select Target Audiences 6. Select and Pilot Test Interventions 7. Develop Peer Facilitator Plan 8. Identify Needed Resources 9. Gain Support from Top Administrators 10. Develop Public Relations Plan 11. Decide How to Market Program 12. Secure and Educate Allies 13. Initiate Evaluation and Monitoring 14. Train Facilitators 15. Announce Program or New Service 16. Change School Policies -------------------- Chapter 4 Prevention Programming Ideas The following discussion offers a number of approaches to preventing acquaintance rape which are based on activities that colleges and universities across the country have implemented. Chapter 5 focuses entirely on one particular approach: small-group workshops for students. How To Use This Information The approaches presented below can be used in three ways: to start an acquaintance rape program from scratch; to add selected prevention activities to an existing program; or to replace, modify, or improve current efforts as appropriate for a given school. Six principles can guide the development, improvement, or expansion of an acquaintance rape prevention program: (1) Efforts that try to change campus norms about the acceptability of acquaintance rape and abusive drinking will, in the long run, be more successful in preventing sexual assault than efforts targeted to specific individual students. (2) The more components included in the program, the greater the chances of reaching every student - and reaching every student more than once, thereby reinforcing the prevention message. (3) The more stakeholders involved in the planning group, the more likely the program will gain the cooperation of other campus segments and endure. (4) Any steps the school takes to reduce drinking, especially binge drinking, are likely to reduce acquaintance rape. (5) The program will be more successful in preventing acquaintance rape if it makes use of approaches that involve trained student facilitators talking with other students rather than relying primarily on older adults or written or audiovisual materials to deliver prevention messages. (6) What works in one school may not work at another. Tailor the program to the school's environment and student body. Before developing or revising the program, decide whether to mandate student attendance at some or all program activities; provide small-group sessions, large-group sessions, or both; have single-sex sessions, mixed-sex sessions, or some combination of the two; and use trained students or staff to lead the sessions. The discussion below and in chapter 5 provides guidance for answering each of these preliminary questions. Prevention Activities Of the many activities that can be employed to help prevent acquaintance rape, the most important ones are discussed below. Reach Students during Orientation All schools have some form of new student orientation. Sometimes, activities addressing acquaintance rape can be grafted easily onto existing orientation activities. Often, however, the orientation period is already packed with events and there is little time to introduce a new activity. (See the box on page 29.) However, school officials report that this is a critical time for reaching students, because acquaintance rape often occurs during the first few weeks or months after a student enrolls. In addition, orientation offers an opportunity to shape student attitudes - and, as a result, campus norms - before new students become acculturated to any existing negative campus norms and become more impervious to change. What can be done during orientation? For four years, Brown University has held a mandatory two-hour meeting for all incoming students to discuss acquaintance rape and the role of alcohol. Two or three trained peer educators run sessions on Sunday evenings in residence hall lounges with groups of 35-45 students. (A detailed, 13- page script of the mandatory orientation meeting written by Toby Simon, Associate Dean of Student Life at Brown, and Cathy Harris, a student who helped initiate and lead the program, is available as appendix G of Sex without Consent from Learning Publications, Inc., Holmes Beach, Florida, (813) 778-6651.) At Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, trained facilitators lead separate mandatory rape prevention workshops for small groups of 15-20 first-year men and women over a period of five evenings in residence hall lounges and classrooms. Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, gives presentations three times during freshman orientation to 500 incoming students at each session. While orientation counselors advise students to attend, participation is voluntary (no orientation activities are mandated at the school). To attract students, the organizers pitch the session as a discussion on sex, not rape, begin with a couple of engrossing skits, and introduce some humor. As a result, the presentations are now standing room only, with half the incoming class voluntarily attending at least one session. Some schools combine discussions about acquaintance rape with discussions about other health or safety issues during orientation, or they may offer presentations to large audiences and then follow up with small-group discussions. The University of San Diego does both. First, from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. on two different days, individual speakers share their personal stories regarding a particular health lifestyle issue with several hundred students. The speakers include an acquaintance rape survivor, a recovering alcoholic, a person with AIDS, and a person with an eating disorder. Then, the students break into small groups of 15-20 in which trained peer facilitators moderate a discussion of the four topics that have been presented. Although not mandatory, the session routinely attracts 800 of 1,000 incoming students who have been up until 1:00 a.m. the previous night touring Seaworld. Conduct Activities in Residence Halls A number of schools offer workshops in residence halls, usually on a request basis. At some schools, requests are frequent because the institution requires that resident advisors (RAs) present one or more educational presentations to their floors or residence halls each semester. Muskingum College in Ohio increases the number of requests it gets to run workshops by requiring every RA to attend a half-day training awareness session on acquaintance rape. As a result, the school's peer education program gets about 20 requests for residence hall workshops from the 40 RAs each year. Since attendance is voluntary at these sessions, the number of residents who show up can be small. At one school, although a workshop is given at half the residence halls, only 15-30 residents, out of more than 200, show up. While incentives like offering pizza and having well-known athletes as facilitators may increase attendance, the best solution to the attendance problem is to make participation mandatory. Target Fraternities and Sororities Not all students live in residence halls. On some campuses more than half the students live in fraternity and sorority houses. Programs that target only residence halls miss these students (unless they are reached during new student orientation). In addition, studies suggest that, in the past, fraternity members may have been responsible for a disproportionate number of acquaintance rapes. For example, a 1990 University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign study showed that fraternity men, who constituted one-fourth of male students, were the accused in nearly two-thirds of the sexual assault cases. Four out of ten cases of assault occurred in fraternity chapters.1 In addition, students living in fraternities and sororities report drinking three times as many drinks as the average student - 15 drinks per week versus 5 drinks by other students.2 A 1993 survey of over 17,000 students at 140 colleges in 40 states found that 86 percent of students who lived in fraternities were binge drinkers - that is, had consumed at least 5 drinks (4 for women) at one sitting during the previous two weeks - compared with 50 percent of male students overall.3 Not all studies have found a disproportionate amount of acquaintance rape by fraternity members.4 Part, or all, of the reported excess involvement of Greek men in this crime may reflect a greater tendency among victims to report rape when fraternity men commit the act than when other men do. In addition, new risk management policies adopted by fraternities in the early 1990s, and other efforts discussed below and in the box, may have reduced the number of rapes committed by fraternity men. Some Greek organizations at individual schools have required that pledges participate in a workshop on acquaintance rape. The interfraternity organizations at a number of schools, such as the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), have initiated mandatory annual workshops on acquaintance rape and its relationship to drinking for all fraternity and sorority pledges. While there had already been a number of cases of alcohol-related acquaintance rape in the Greek system at UCLA, a publicized incident of sexual assault at a rush event contributed to a decision by the presidents of the Interfraternity Council (IFC) and the Panhellenic Group to mandate acquaintance rape prevention training for new pledges. The Interfraternity Council at Pennsylvania State University developed a mandatory sexual assault education program for all new fraternity members. In groups of about 70 students each, between 600 and 700 pledges attend the program each year. Conducted by the coordinator of Greek life and the sexual assault counselor from the Center for Women Students, the program relies on trained students to lead small-group discussions following a film of a simulated fraternity party. The University of Maine's Greek Peer Educator Program recruits one member from every fraternity and sorority. After a semester-long training, members offer a mandatory workshop for pledges entitled "Liquor, Law and Lust" which focuses on alcohol, risk management, and sexual assault. David Westol, executive director of the national headquarters of Theta Chi and a former prosecutor, says he regularly tells chapters that, if chapter members are involved in a gang rape, the chapter's charter will be revoked. He points out that Theta Chi, as do most other fraternities and sororities, has consultants - recent alumni - who make a two-year commitment to visit chapters across the country conducting seminars, providing technical assistance, and advising members as to issues and procedures regarding acquaintance rape prevention and other matters. Westol says that "our workshops, leadership conferences, and seminars [on acquaintance rape] should be combined and blended with workshops offered by the host institutions. It is that consolidation of effort that will help us reach every undergraduate in one way or another." A number of schools offer workshops on sexual assault at the request of local Greek chapters. Because fraternities are often required by their national office to provide education programs on risk management, they sometimes request workshops on acquaintance rape to meet the requirement. On other campuses, however, very few Greek chapters request presentations on sexual assault, and, when they do, attendance by members is often voluntary and sparse. At one school with 55 percent of its students in Greek life, only two fraternities have invited the sexual assault prevention program to conduct a workshop. As a result, a few schools have gone one step further and made workshops for Greeks mandatory. After a fraternity had come under fire for sexual harassment, the new Greek coordinator at the University of New Hampshire required that all fraternities receive sexual assault programming. At the Colorado School of Mines, the dean of students, concerned about a recent campus incident and the negative publicity that acquaintance rapes at other schools in the state were attracting, decided to require that all fraternity and sorority members attend small-group workshops offered by the Student Development Center on acquaintance rape and alcohol. The University of Virginia has taken a different tack in trying to prevent sexual assault in fraternities. Each spring, the dean of students enters into a fraternal organization agreement with all Greek chapters (which own their own properties), in which each chapter submits a written statement of its policies with regard to safety issues, including acquaintance rape and drinking, along with the steps it will take to enforce and support its policies. Each chapter is required to conduct one educational program a year on sexual assault. The contract is signed by the president of each chapter, the president of the Interfraternity Council, and the associate dean of students as the representative of the university. According to Assistant Dean of Students Shamim Sisson, "Eventually all the chapters come around" and submit an acceptable plan. Twice a year, the dean's office sends each chapter a reporting form for recording how it has acted to fulfill the terms of its contract. "Occasionally," Dean Sisson says, "a chapter's whole report looks abysmal, so we sit down with the fraternity leadership and help them get back on track." While a chapter that fails to comply could be prohibited from using university space, engaging in intramural sports, or participating in the Interfraternity Council, the process, according to Sisson, is designed to be educational, not punitive, by making clear to each chapter what its responsibilities and liabilities are. Here is what one fraternity chapter agreement says: We have at least one member at all times who has received training in sexual assault education/prevention through Sexual Assault Facts and Education (the school peer education program), and he is responsible for presenting or arranging a presentation on sexual assault each semester. In addition, we have an Officer from the University Police force speak at a brotherhood meeting at least once per year to inform the men of the consequences and definitions of sexual assault. Our pledges are given a presentation not only by our SAFE representative, but the president also holds individual meetings with the pledges to stress the gravity of the prevention measure that we have and to make sure that the pledges understand the importance of preventing any incidents. Does the agreement work? According to Claire Kaplan, coordinator of the school's Sexual Assault Office, "toward the end of every year I get calls from Greek educational coordinators asking for programs because they're running out of time to meet their contract requirements. The contract works; in fact, the average Greek is more educated about acquaintance rape than other students because of the required programming." However, this approach will fail to prevent the large percentage of rapes that occur at the beginning of the academic year at most schools. As a result, the best approach is to supplement these agreements with mandatory workshops for Greeks conducted during orientation week. Target Athletic Teams Studies suggest that athletes may commit a disproportionate number of sexual assaults on some campuses. Nationwide, one percent of 1,224 nonathlete students who were heavy drinkers reported having committed acquaintance rape, but five times as many student athletes - 5 percent of 217 athletes - admitted to perpetrating this crime.5 While only 2 percent of students at the University of Illinois were athletes in 1992, data from 925 randomly selected undergraduate women at the school showed that 20 percent of the men involved in sexual assault or attempted sexual assault were members of sports teams or sports clubs.6 At the same time, athletes are significant role models for many other students. As a result, if athletes commit acquaintance rape - and get away with it - they may encourage other students to engage in the behavior by helping to establish a school norm that sexual assault is acceptable - even desirable - behavior. Reducing the problem among athletes may have a ripple effect in curtailing it among other men. After experimenting with voluntary workshops provided at the request of individual coaches, the athletic department at Cornell decided to mandate rape prevention education as part of a mandatory one-credit health education course for all varsity athletes. The most highly rated class session has been the one on rape prevention. The University of Maine has developed a peer education program, Athletes for Sexual Responsibility, which trains athletes as role models and actors. The trained athletes offer a rape awareness workshop to all first-year athletes, to students living in residence halls and Greek houses, and to students at other colleges and universities. At the University of Connecticut, the director of the Women's Center met with the new director of the athletics department and convinced him to let her offer a voluntary workshop on sexual assault. By the second year, after several sexual assaults occurred involving team members, he agreed to make the one-hour workshop mandatory for all 18 varsity teams, both male and female. Coaches can have considerable influence on their athletes, and coaches often take a personal interest in their athletes' lives and well-being. Efforts that succeed in making coaches allies with the process of changing norms surrounding acquaintance rape stand the best chance of reducing the problem.7 Reflecting this consideration, the Women's Center at the University of Connecticut provided a mandatory group presentation to all the coaches, which preceded the player workshops, to explain how important it was for them to act as role models for athletes and other students in terms of their own drinking behavior and attitudes toward alcohol and sex. The presentation also explained how an incident could damage their reputations and the reputations of the players, the team, and the school. At the Colorado School of Mines, the varsity football coach decided to act before a problem arose. After hearing how college coaches at other schools had come under fire because of their players' drinking and assaultive behavior, he asked the staff at the Student Development Center to provide a workshop on acquaintance rape for the players. Diana Doyle, Director of Student Development, remembers that "we were also doing a separate alcohol awareness program with a FIPSE [Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education] grant, and, seeing how alcohol and sexual assaults are related, we decided to address both problems together in a specially developed workshop. . . ." Establish Strict, Clear School Policies An absolutely essential step for changing campus norms about acquaintance rape is to establish policies that make sexual assault a behavior that will not be tolerated and will be sternly punished. School administrators must follow through on these policies by making sure that every student becomes familiar with them - by talking about the issues, not just by writing policies; the policies are enforced; violators are punished sternly and consistently; and the violations and punishments are reported widely. Rutgers University in New Jersey, with 49 Greek organizations on campus, enforces good behavior in part through its Board of Control, a group of at least 12 fraternity and sorority students who check on fraternity parties in progress to make sure there is no sexual misconduct, fighting, vandalism, or other misbehavior. Local police train the students on how to confront violent situations and how to write up violations of school policy they may encounter during their patrols. Police provide walkie-talkies and instruct patrol members to call the police if a fight breaks out or is in progress; members are instructed not to intervene themselves. According to Teresa Loser, head of the school's Fraternity and Sorority Office, the patrol is able to function "because the university limits fraternity parties to Friday and Saturday evenings, requires that all parties be registered in advance with the school's Fraternity Affairs Office, and submits the list of planned parties to the local police department." Unannounced, the Board of Control checks on every party three times a night, roughly between 9:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., between 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., and between 1:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. On each visit, the board records on a check list whether the party is (a) making proper use of invitations or guest lists, (b) checking IDs, (c) using stamps or bracelets to identify guests of legal drinking age, and (d) keeping the noise level down. The patrol team informs the Greek officer in charge of the event of any violations and turns in the forms to the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs the following Monday. According to Loser, "We clamp down hard on fraternities that violate our policies. We took away one fraternity's social privileges for a year and took it out of the intramural sports program. We put another fraternity on probation." According to Brian Rose, a school employee who helps supervise the patrol, "By limiting alcohol abuse and intoxication, the patrols create a safer environment for women." To further safeguard women at fraternity parties, any woman who feels unsafe at a party may require one of the party chairpersons, or call the police, to escort her to one of a few houses on campus that are designated as safe havens because they will not be holding a party that evening. Sanctions can be especially powerful when coaches and national fraternities discipline players and chapters. When a University of Tennessee student filed a sexual assault complaint against three football players during the 1990 season, the coach immediately suspended them and called the incident "an embarrassment to our team, our coaches, and our university."8 "While most university administrators agree that institutions need to develop community standards [for violence by students], few are willing to seriously hold students accountable for their behavior through separation from the institution." - Jeanine Beratta, Assistant Director for Judicial Life, Northeastern University In 1990, Northeastern University initiated a new conduct code that carries a minimum suspension, lasting one academic quarter, for students involved in sexual assault, fighting, or the sale or distribution of alcohol to minors. The code governs student behavior off campus as well as on campus. University police officers are paired with city police officers (paid by the school) to patrol neighborhoods around the school because the Boston police can gain legal access to private apartments. As students get punished during the course of the year, the rest of the student body realizes the school means business. During the first year the code was in force, the university suspended 20 students. Before returning to school, all suspended students who have violated the code must complete a six-week alcohol and drug education course. However, the school has expelled all six students who the school's student-run judicial court determined committed acquaintance rape. Residence hall advisors are in a unique position to enforce campus rules about drinking and sexual misconduct, but many of them are also notoriously reluctant to discipline students who violate school rules. Northeastern University tackles this dilemma by providing an annual week-long mandatory session for all RAs on how to enforce the entire set of residence hall rules, including those related to drinking and sexual misconduct. The school's alcohol coordinator spends four to five hours on alcohol issues alone. Residence hall advisors are imbued with the administration's philosophy that acquaintance rape and drinking will not be tolerated. Residence hall advisors explain the code to students in a mandatory meeting on the first night of school. To encourage RAs to report rule violations, the school separates RAs from any responsibility for punishing violators. When residents break a rule, the RA does not even give them a verbal warning; instead, the RA immediately writes up an incident report and sends it to the hall director. The RA is then free the next day to counsel and provide support to the student as a peer rather than as an authority figure. If the incident is minor, the residence hall director addresses it; if the incident is serious, it is handled by the Office of Judicial Affairs for possible referral to the student court.9 Given the reluctance of many RAs and other students to enforce rules, another key to effective enforcement is a regular adult presence wherever students may misbehave. According to Dorothy Siegel, Vice President for Student Services and Director of the Campus Violence Prevention Center at Towson State University in Maryland, to prevent acquaintance rape "you need a lot of adult presence - especially, the presence of a significant adult" who matters to students. A Greek chapter advisor echoes the same theme: "Another aspect of the chapter management which helps control problems is the interest and activity of an involved chapter advisor," according to Paul Campbell, chapter advisor to Lambda Chi, a fraternity at Wayne State College in Nebraska. "I go to all weekly meetings and attend many of the social events. . . . An advisor should be visible in chapter meetings, a frequent visitor in the house at social events, and should make frequent unannounced and unpredictable walk-throughs, even after midnight."10 Other Approaches A number of schools have used still other approaches to preventing acquaintance rape. While each approach has drawbacks, all are useful adjuncts to a larger campaign designed to address the problem. Classroom presentations. Some programs offer to take over a class period to present a workshop on acquaintance rape to the students in the course. Muskingum College and the University of New Hampshire advertise their workshops to the entire school faculty. Portland State University in Oregon decided to target faculty who teach courses that have some relationship to the problem of sexual assault, such as sociology, psychology, and health education instructors. Peer-led workshops were given in more than 20 classes during a single semester in 1994; during the entire year, 1,500 out of 10,000 students participated in at least one of the workshops. While this approach usually fails to attract much faculty interest, in a school like Portland State where nearly 90 percent of students are commuters, the classroom becomes an important route for reaching nonresidential students. Awareness week. Some schools declare a particular week Sexual Assault Awareness Week and saturate the campus with activities addressing the problem. Because these activities are voluntary, the number of students who participate actively may be limited, and most activities may involve preaching to the choir. In addition, as one campus director of health education observes, "We don't use awareness weeks because they are very expensive and labor intensive. They raise awareness, but that's all they do. I'd rather use the money for doing things year round." However, an awareness week may not only raise the consciousness of some students regarding the prevalence, seriousness, and nature of the acquaintance rape problem, it may also contribute to changing campus norms about the acceptability of abusive drinking and sexual behavior. Sometimes as part of the week's events or as an independent activity held at another time during the school year, schools host a Take Back the Night March that is also designed to raise student awareness about the problem of sexual assault and change campus norms about the behavior. Self-defense courses. A few schools, such as Muskingum College and UCLA, offer women courses in defending themselves against rape. At UCLA, the school contracts with the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women to provide certified instructors to teach free Saturday workshops for students, faculty, and staff. While much of the focus is on preventing stranger rape, typically these courses also provide techniques women can use to prevent assaults by acquaintances, including techniques for defusing situations in which men start to become aggressive or violent. These courses also stress the role alcohol plays in reducing women's ability to assess dangerous situations and take effective action to prevent or escape them. How Much Will Students Listen To? No school is likely to have the resources to implement all these interventions. However, some activities, like policy statements and workshops for incoming freshmen, are essential to any effective campaign to curb acquaintance rape. Furthermore, the more interventions that can be implemented, the more students the program is likely to reach. Still, some administrators may wonder, "If the same students are exposed to two or three interventions, will they become bored or, worse, tune out the messages?" One administrator says her school does not make attendance at acquaintance rape workshops mandatory for residence halls, athletic teams, and Greeks because every student participates in a sexual assault presentation during freshman orientation, and they would ignore any messages they heard for the second time. Despite these concerns, other administrators suggest this is unlikely to happen. For one thing, much of the impact of a one-time-only presentation during student orientation may be lost "because incoming students tend to be overloaded with other information at this time."11 Even if students do absorb the information from two or more presentation, no two events will have the exact same content. Students will always have different questions, raise new concerns and objections, and create a dynamic that is different from activity to activity. In addition, students are different each time they participate in a prevention event: they are older and have had new experiences since the previous event. As a result, they bring new perspectives and opinions about the problem. According to Jackie Curtis, a senior at Michigan State University, "by the end of my freshman year I was very much a different person than I had been at the beginning of the year . . . with very different viewpoints and attitudes." Finally, as advertisers have empirically documented, repetition is the name of the game. Rather than deflect most people's interest, giving the same message over and over is often essential for people to absorb it. Again, according to Curtis, "We had orientation in June before our freshman year. They had sessions about rape and alcohol, but by the time we got to school in September, we had already forgotten most of what we learned." "From its inception, our model was based on four concepts: (1) saturation approach, (2) a changing of community norms, (3) surveillance of alcohol use and abuse, and (4) consciousness raising. The saturation approach is based on a primary concept of learning, namely repetition." - Toby Simon, Associate Dean of Student Life, Brown University Most of all, only multiple prevention approaches involving all elements of the campus in repeated and mutually reinforcing exposure to issues like alcohol and acquaintance rape are capable of changing campus norms. Only with this type of multipronged campaign will a critical mass of students, faculty, and staff come to share a common view about the total unacceptability of binge drinking and sexual assault. And only then will these behaviors decline significantly.12 Getting Students To Attend In addition to making funds, staff, and official recognition available, top administration support is usually necessary for making student participation in acquaintance rape workshops mandatory. Required participation ensures that every student will be exposed to a workshop at least once. To be sure, hard-core rapists and serious problem drinkers are unlikely to change their behavior after attending a required workshop. However, there may be many borderline students, who would normally avoid these workshops, whose attitudes and behavior can be shifted in positive directions if they are forced to participate. In addition, even teetotaling students who would never commit sexual assault or put themselves at risk of being sexually assaulted can benefit from hearing their beliefs and practices validated during a workshop. Sometimes, even the faithful need a supportive sermon. Mandatory programs also demonstrate the school's firm commitment that is crucial to motivating students to take seriously the message that sexual assault will not be tolerated. While much better than nothing, voluntary programs fail to demonstrate to students that this is an issue the school considers important. Obtaining Attendance During Orientation Because many schools have a policy to not mandate any activities during freshman orientation, acquaintance rape programs have to find ways to motivate students to attend orientation workshops. To attract students, Cornell's Andrea Parrot was careful not to use the word rape to describe the workshop in order not to discourage men from attending; instead, she called the workshop "Sex at 7:00." In addition, Parrot made student discussion - not lectures - the primary program component, introduced humor, and began each session with skits conducted by students from the school's theater arts department. The result has been standing-room-only crowds as more than 1,500 students - half the incoming freshman class - attend one of the three workshops offered during orientation week. Securing Invitations Campuswide Most programs market their services by sending out letters or flyers to residence hall advisors, coaches, faculty, and Greek chapters. Because residence hall advisors and risk management coordinators at fraternities and sororities on some campuses are required to offer educational programs for the students they supervise, this marketing approach often meets with some success. However, because of its voluntary nature, the approach rarely results in programming that reaches every student. To generate additional workshop requests, program staff at UCLA set up meetings with the presidents of campus organizations. Programs at several schools place notices in the school newspaper and put up promotional posters around campus. The University of Michigan sends e-mail messages to members of student organizations that are on-line. Ferris State University's acquaintance rape prevention program obtains permission to provide its workshop to classes by informing professors that, when they go on institutional travel, they can invite the program to run their class instead of simply canceling it. Some professors find this option attractive, according to Lenny Shible, Alcohol and Other Drugs Counselor, because "while traveling professors still have to find another instructor to cover for the class, they do not have to ask the colleague to teach it." A particularly effective way to encourage invitations is to recruit students as peer educators who are in a good position to arrange for invitations. At Muskingum, 10 of 22 peer educators are, or have been, residence hall advisors who can arrange for workshop invitations. At Brown, fraternity and sorority members who are among the peer facilitators in the school's Sexual Assault Peer Education program get their chapters to request workshops. At the University of Pennsylvania, facilitators in Students Together Against Acquaintance Rape who are leaders of their fraternities and sororities urge their brothers and sisters to attend the program's workshops. Getting to college athletes is often difficult, because coaches and administrators may be concerned about casting their teams in a bad light or may not believe their players need education on acquaintance rape and drinking. However, as Kathy Rose-Mockry, Director of UCLA's Women's Center, points out, "coaches may not lack interest in the program, but they have tremendous problems scheduling additional activities for their players," particularly in-season, when athletes have little free time to do anything but play, practice, attend class, and study. As a result, college coaches tend to contact sexual assault programs only after a player has been involved in a widely publicized and condemned sexual assault. When the Providence police arrested an intoxicated Brown University hockey player for sexual assault, the coach asked the dean of student life to provide a presentation on acquaintance rape to the team. A similar chain of events happened to the University of Michigan hockey team and the University of Pennsylvania crew team. "Don't lecture at the male players, and do listen to their side of the story. Otherwise, you won't get invited back. You may get only one chance to win them over and persuade them to take time from practice to listen to you." - Nina Cummings, Health Education Coordinator, Cornell University. Coaches may welcome overtures from program staff to run workshops for their athletes. According to one coach, "Some coaches and players are tired of their negative image on and off campus and therefore are interested in participating in a program that may help improve their image." "If coaches resist the idea of a rape prevention program, . . . appeal to concern for the team's well-being, . . . safety, and the players' function as role models in the college community . . . ." - Andrea Parrot, Associate Professor, Cornell University With regard to gaining access to fraternity and sorority chapters, Kathy Rose-Mockry, Director of the Women's Resource Center at UCLA, observes that "We try to keep a general focus and not focus on Greeks as the sole target, because they may feel they are being singled out unfairly as scapegoats for the problem. We stress instead that acquaintance rape is an across-the-board phenomenon." Sidebars Getting on the Orientation Agenda When Myra Hindus was first hired by the University of Connecticut to run its Women's Center, she was told that there was no time during new student orientation to fit in an activity on acquaintance rape. With the help of media attention to the problem and her own persistence, she was eventually given permission to provide a session. Although she wanted to put on a skit, she was told that was too serious, so she compromised on a 60-minute session consisting of a video and follow-up discussion offered ten times over the seven-day orientation period. Students now rate the session as one of the best orientation events they attend. ------------- Fraternity Chapters Take Action At the University of Maine, after a series of events in 1989-1990 culminated in a huge, drunken fight which led to a lawsuit, the national Sigma Chi fraternity placed the 90-year-old chapter on two years' probation, expelled all but 12 of its 55 residents, and banned alcohol and parties. However, in 1991, an acquaintance rape occurred at a party held in violation of the conditions of probation, which, according to John Moon, the chapter advisor, "blew the lid off everything." As a result, Moon and other chapter alumni, who own the building, raised money to completely renovate what was once a beautiful structure and put a plan in place to make - and keep - the chapter substance free. All the previous residents were kicked out this time, new members were told that alcohol and other drugs would not be tolerated, and a resident advisor was installed in the house. As of 1994, there were already 28 residents and 17 other brothers. Initially seen by members of other fraternities as "geeks," the brothers at Sigma Chi are now considered "cool." In fact, according to Moon, the house has become a model for other fraternities on campus, two of which have also gone chemical-free. The fraternity continues to have parties with women, but, because no alcohol is allowed, it has become known as a safe place for women to go. No more cases of sexual assaults have been reported. At Wayne State College in Nebraska, a fraternity chapter initiated a preemptive strike against the possibility of sexual assaults in its building. In the summer of 1991, the officers of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity and their faculty advisor decided that the occurrence of two alcohol-related acquaintance rape cases on campus the preceding year (which did not involve fraternity members) and national press reports about the problem at other schools indicated they, too, could develop a problem which was best addressed before it happened. As a result, the chapter invited a guest speaker from a local domestic violence and sexual assault victim services agency to discuss the dynamics of dating violence and the services available to men who do not control their dating behavior. Chapter officers agreed to cancel pornography night, cancel their subscription to Playboy, fill in the peephole, and ban kegs, open parties, roof parties, and drinking games. The officers did not act on their own, however. "It is folly to expect 20-year-old chapter officers to have the willingness or skills to confront problem behaviors or to discuss the sensitive issues in dating and dating violence," says Paul Campbell, the chapter's faculty advisor. In fact, it was Campbell's prodding and subsequent monitoring of the chapter's compliance that resulted in the officers taking action to try to prevent sexual assault by its members. ------------ National Fraternities Pitch In Pi Kappa Phi has strict rules about sexual assault and distributes its own guide for chapter leaders to follow for setting up a rape awareness program within their chapters. The 40 Greek societies that belong to the Fraternity Insurance Purchasing Group (no longer in the business of buying group insurance) are required to implement risk management programs for their chapters focusing on such areas as acquaintance rape, hazing, and drinking. The National Interfraternity Conference (NIC) distributes a resource manual on sexual assault to national fraternities, college presidents, chief student affairs officers, Greek advisors, and the interfraternity council president. Conference staff promote the manual and its messages at national and regional fraternity conferences. The council has also prepared, and sells, an exercise called Stop, Look and Listen that addresses the consequences of drinking, including acquaintance rape. ------------ A Guide to Developing Policies that Work Eugene D. Gulland, Developing Effective and Legally Sound Alcohol Policies. 1994. Single copies free from the National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA), One Dupont Circle, Suite 620, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 833-8390. While this publication addresses alcohol policies, the legal and common sense guidelines it provides are applicable to establishing policies related to acquaintance rape as well. ------------- Some Typical Sexual Assault Awareness Week Activities At UCLA, Rape and Sexual Assault Awareness Week activities have included: a video on a drunken fraternity party that ends in a date rape, with follow-up discussion led by trained peer educators an interactive workshop on dating attitudes and how they are linked with sexual assault a presentation run by the men's education outreach coordinator on understanding consent an information fair describing campus and community resources that deal with sexual coercion a tie-a-yellow-ribbon activity in which students pin a ribbon on an oversize student community bulletin board in recognition of someone they know who has been sexually assaulted three half-hour self-defense demonstrations on how to ward off a sexual assault in a car ----------------- Cornell's Multipronged College Campaign a presentation on acquaintance rape offered to 1,500 freshmen during orientation week as many as 25 peer-led workshops offered to residence halls and Greek societies each year a special health education course given to varsity athletes, one part of which addresses gender roles and rape prevention a specially designed workshop offered to international students a sexual assault awareness week every spring attended by more than 900 Greeks --------------- Use Personal Contacts To Get Invitations Two program staff at the Colorado School of Mines who work out in the weight room converse regularly with coaches who are also pumping iron. The director of Michigan's Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Center is able to capitalize on her husband's former career as a professional football player to gain entrŽe with coaches. At Cornell, Andrea Parrot, a faculty member who specialized in human sexuality and had developed training programs on acquaintance rape, happened to live next door to the varsity football coach. One day when she ran into him at the mailbox, Parrot said that she would like to run a pre-season workshop for his players, and the coach agreed. As a result of the positive response among the team's 100 players, the coach has invited the program back every year. In addition, the football players' enthusiasm for the program caught the attention of the rowing coach, who requested a presentation for the 60 members of his team. ---------------- Endnotes 1. O'Shaughnessy, M.E., and Proctor, C.J. Summary Report. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois, 1990, cited in Frintner, M.P. and Rubinson, L. Acquaintance rape: The influence of alcohol, fraternity membership, and sports team membership. Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, 1993, 19:272-284; see also, Boeringer, S.B.; Shehan, C.L.; and Akers, R.L. Social contexts and social learning in sexual learning and coercion: Assessing the contribution of fraternity membership. Family Relations, 1991, 40:58-64. 2. Data generated from Presley, C.A.; Meilman, P.W.; and Lyerla, R. Core Alcohol and Drug Survey. Carbondale, Illinois: University of Southern Illinois, 1989-1991, cited in Rethinking Rites of Passage: Substance Abuse on America's Campuses. A Report by the Commission on Substance Abuse at Colleges and Universities. New York: Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, 1994. 3. Unpublished survey data from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, 1993. 4. Jackson, T.L. A university athletic department's rape and assault experiences. Journal of College Student Development, 1991, 32:77-78. 5. Bausell, R.B.; Bausell, C.R.; and Siegel, D.G. The Links Among Alcohol, Drugs and Crime on American College Campuses: A National Followup Study. Unpublished report by the Towson State University Campus Violence Prevention Center, Towson, Maryland, 1994. 6. Frintner, M.P., and Rubinson, L. Acquaintance rape: The influence of alcohol. See also, Crosset, T.W.; McDonald, M.A.; and Benedict, J.R. Male student athletes reported for sexual assault: A survey of campus police departments and judicial affairs offices. Journal of Sports and Social Issues, 1995, 19(2), in press; and Parrot, A.; Cummings, N.; and Marchell, T. Rape 101: Sexual Assault Prevention for College Athletes. Holmes Beach, Florida: Learning Publications, Inc.: 1994, pp. 5-8. 7. Berkowitz, A. The Role of Coaches in Rape Prevention Programs for Athletes. In Parrot et al. Rape 101: Sexual Assault Prevention for College Athletes. 8. Marchell, T.; Hofher, J.; Parrot, A.; and Cummings, N. Prevention by education. Athletic Management, November 1992: 44-48. 9. For a detailed discussion of internal disciplinary procedures for acqaintance rape cases, see Burling, P. Acquaintance Rape on Campus: A Model for Institutional Response. Washington, D.C.: National Association of College and University Attorneys, 1993. 10. Campbell, P.V., and Campbell, S.E. A Fraternity Response to Dating. Presented at the Sixth National Conference on Campus Violence, Baltimore, Maryland, February 1992; Burling. Acquaintance Rape on Campus. 11. For a discussion of preventing alcohol and other drug abuse using a multifaceted campaign, see Berkowitz, A.D. Reducing alcohol and other drug abuse on campus: Effective strategies for prevention programs. Eta Sigma Gamman, 1990, 22(1):12-14; Bracht, N. (ed.). Health Promotion at the Community Level. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, 1990. 12. Simon, A.K.; Paris, J.; and Ramsay, C.A. Student Perspectives on Facilitating Rape Prevention Programs. In Berkowitz, A.D. (ed.). Men and Rape: Theory, Research, and Prevention Programs in Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994, pp. 43-50. Chapter 5 What To Include in Acquaintance Rape Workshops Chapter Summary ¥Workshops for small groups of students are an important means of preventing acquaintance rape, especially when they are led by trained peer facilitators. ¥Using peer facilitators helps improve attendance and increases the workshops' effectiveness. However, programs must invest the time and effort in carefully selecting, training, and monitoring the work of peer facilitators. ¥Using Greeks and athletes as workshop facilitators can be especially Most programs address a number of topics in the workshops, including definition of terms; communication between the sexes about sex; ways of reducing risk; and legal consequences. ¥Workshops devote special attention to the role that drinking plays in acquaintance rape. ¥Workshops typically make use of some combination of introductory icebreaker activities; videos or skits; and small group discussion. As indicated in previous chapters, a multipronged campaign is necessary to change campus norms about the acceptability of acquaintance rape. However, in selecting approaches to changing norms and behavior, few schools rely on lectures and written materials. Students do not like to be told how they should behave, especially by older adults. And, except for course work (and sometimes not even then), relatively few students read written materials they have not picked out themselves. In addition, passive learning approaches such as lectures and written materials rarely modify behavior except among those who are already receptive to change. As a result, most programs make workshops their centerpiece because, as one student wrote on her evaluation of the UCLA workshop she attended, "A lot of interaction made this much more of a learning experience [than other types of presentations]." The first section of this chapter reviews the topics that programs typically address in these workshops. Since workshops are likely to be most effective if they are led by trained students, the second section of the chapter discusses how to recruit, train, and make the most effective use of peer workshop facilitators. Topics That Should Be Addressed It is beyond the scope of this guide to provide the specific content of the workshops that prevention programs offer students. Detailed workshop outlines can be obtained from a number of publications and schools, and synthesized into a session that is suitable for any particular institution and audience. (See the selected materials listed in the boxes on pages 44 and 45.) However, most acquaintance rape programs address at least the following key issues: the definition of rape, including acquaintance rape and issues surrounding consent; data on the number and nature of sexual assaults at the school and elsewhere in the country (although some programs report that many students find this information too dry and tune it out); the ways in which men and women fail to communicate effectively about sex or misunderstand what the other person is trying to say, and methods by which both parties can communicate and listen effectively; the need for men who disapprove of acquaintance rape - who probably include a silent majority of men on most campuses - to feel comfortable objecting to sexual misconduct among their peers (by voicing their objections, these men can help reverse campus norms that may view sexual assault as acceptable); alternative actions men and women can take to reduce the risk of sexual assault; the role of alcohol in increasing the risk of acquaintance rape and how changes in drinking behavior can lead to risk reduction; the potential legal consequences of committing acquaintance rape; here, programs stress that -- it makes no difference legally that the parties knew each other - it is still rape; -- it makes no difference whether one or both parties are intoxicated - it is still rape; and on-campus and off-campus resources for assisting victims of acquaintance rape or attempted rape, and positive approaches peers can take with both perpetrators and victims. Programs should design their workshops - indeed design all their rape prevention activities - to capitalize on the implications of the available research on sexual assault. In particular, programming should address the following risk factors that have been shown empirically to be associated with men's willingness to condone or engage in sexual assault and women's chances of being raped by someone they know:1 belief in rape myths (e.g., "no does not mean no"); situational risk factors (e.g., drinking; man initiates and pays for date; fraternity parties); misperceptions of sexual intent (e.g., based on a woman's clothing, friendliness, use of alcohol); and peer group support (e.g., men's experiences in all-male environments or with close male peers, as in fraternity houses). "We don't lecture students about rape. Instead, we suggest things they can do. Young adults like being given permission to have options - for example, not to be sexually active and to confront other men who harass them for not being 'studs.'" - Susan Villari, Director of Health Education, University of Pennsylvania Given these research findings, ". . . programs should define rape and sexual assault, challenge rape myths, understand and address male socialization experiences and gender differences in perception, and encourage men to confront peers who express adherence to rape-supportive beliefs."2 Incorporating the Role of Alcohol Almost all acquaintance rape programs address the issue of drinking and its relationship to sexual assault. "Many excellent acquaintance rape prevention curricula are in use on college campuses. . . . Alcohol and other drug use are not, however, central to these curricula. Acquaintance rape staff should supplement existing manuals with further information about the ways in which alcohol and other drug use can lead to acquaintance rape." - Antonia Abbey, Assistant Professor, Wayne State University Facilitators introduce the role of alcohol into workshops in a number of different ways. Some presenters ask students to suggest the role alcohol plays and build on the students' own observations. Even if the facilitators make no mention of alcohol, usually students bring it up, as when men ask, "Why is the guy responsible, but she isn't, if they're both drunk?" Other group leaders use videos or skits involving acquaintance rape (see the section below on Approaches and Materials) in which drinking plays a prominent part and, as a result, gets included in the follow-up discussion. Sometimes facilitators present statistics on the relationship between drinking and acquaintance rape. The principal connections that programs make between drinking and acquaintance rape typically include the effects of drinking on the women's ability to give consent - a drunken "yes" is not necessarily a true or legal "yes"; "Programming needs to move beyond basic awareness and education to behavior change. . . . Alcohol can ruin all the effects of training, though. So our efforts to get students to drink less are very important." - Shamim Sisson, Assistant Dean of Students, University of Virginia the woman's ability to communicate her feelings and intentions clearly; the man's ability and willingness to accept what the woman is saying; the woman's ability to assess dangerous situations and to escape them; and the man's ability to resist peer pressure to commit rape. Targeting Student Subpopulations Cornell has found it can be difficult to motivate some foreign students to talk about sex because their cultural background discourages frankness in this area. In addition, drinking is often not an important issue among students from some foreign countries and, therefore, requires less discussion in relation to sexual assault. The health education department is experimenting with having someone from the school safety office talk to these students about crime prevention, after which program staff try to explain tactfully how women in the audience could be victimized by someone they know. Nina Cummings, Health Education Coordinator at Cornell, tried to develop a workshop specifically targeted to African Americans. However, according to Cummings, "We found that the issues aren't any different for African Americans than for anyone else, except that they have less faith in reporting rape to the criminal justice system." "Working with African American male athletes on the issue of sexual violence involves exploring cultural and racial patterns of communication, behavioral expressions of masculinity, masculinity development, and the impact of racism on African American men in America." - Ron Campbell, Assistant Vice President for Housing, University of Minnesota. Working with African American Male Athletes, pp. 26-32 of Andrea Parrot, Nina Cummings, and Timothy Marchell, 1994. Rape 101: Sexual Assault Prevention for College Athletes. Holmes Beach, Florida: Learning Publications, 1994. Illinois State University runs workshops on Alcohol Advertisements and Safety, one of which targets African Americans by bringing in pertinent aspects of black history in America and showing how advertisers pitch certain products, such as malt liquor, to African Americans. The workshop then draws links between drinking and violence. Alan Berkowitz at Hobart and William Smith Colleges suggests that both race and gender issues must be addressed when developing programs for men of color. "As men, men of color may adhere to many of the rape myths and attitudes which should be addressed with all rape prevention programs. However, due to the racism in our society, men of color are more likely to be falsely accused of rape, and campus judicial systems may handle their cases less fairly." Thus, both race and gender issues should be addressed to tailor programs effectively for men of color. Students at Portland State University have a mean age of 28. As a result, Candace Reynolds, head of the school's Peers Educating Peers program, has to modify her acquaintance rape workshops for older people. For example, she incorporates vignettes of sexual assault that involve older women returning to school who have not dated for many years. Reynolds is also careful to team an older peer trainer with a younger peer trainer to run each workshop. Approaches and Materials Programs use primarily four vehicles for delivering the message that acquaintance rape is wrong and unacceptable: introductory icebreaker activities; videos; skits; and small-group discussion. Icebreakers According to a peer leader at Hobart College, "When I became a facilitator, I learned that the key to facilitation is getting the group interested and involved. To begin a discussion, an icebreaker is generally the first order of business. In the rape prevention workshop [for men only], asking each member of the group to comment on what is difficult about being a first-year man . . . always draws similar responses that focus on the men's difficulties in meeting women."3 The following are some other techniques that schools have used to get discussion going: Ask students to rate on a scale of one to six how strongly they agree or disagree with provocative statements such as the following: - "If a guy spends a lot of money on a date, he's entitled to sex." - "A woman who has more than one or two drinks is asking for sex." - "Women who dress provocatively invite being raped." - "A woman who is drunk can still say 'no' to sex if she really isn't interested." - "It is possible to give nonverbal consent for sex." Alternatively, Lenny Shible of Ferris State University in Michigan suggests having students indicate their position on any of these questions by positioning themselves in the room along a line, one end of which represents "agree completely," the other end of which represents "disagree completely." Have students write anonymously the completion to sentences such as, "I am owed sex when . . . ," or "someone is giving me a sexual come-on when. . . ." Collect the responses and read some aloud, asking for reactions. "Don't hesitate to use humor. . . . Humor helps to release tension and can help diminish defensiveness," write several staff at Cornell University.4 Videos Videos can be used as icebreakers and as the core around which an entire workshop is designed. For example, Playing the Game, sponsored by several national fraternities and their foundations, depicts the rapist's and the victim's versions of the same acquaintance rape. The film focuses on issues of communication and drinking. A companion discussion guide and protocol are available that include suggested discussion points based on the film and outline an entire peer education program on sexuality and communication based on the film (see the box). Some program staff criticize the use of videos and refuse to show them because many students find the films are not relevant to their particular school, residence hall, athletic team, fraternity or sorority, or situation. The University of Michigan's Sexual Assault and Prevention Awareness Center discontinued using videos because students said they preferred to hear students tell their own stories. "By using scare tactics and engendering sadness in audiences, many videos do not help students think about what they can do to prevent acquaintance rape," Susan Villari, Director of Health Education at the University of Pennsylvania, reports. Echoing this theme, Diana Doyle, Director of Student Development at the Colorado School of Mines, says it is important to "leave students feeling empowered, not scared." Villari also notes that "films can be unrealistic, dated, and expensive." As a result, videos should be screened carefully and used only if they are realistic to students, will advance the program's goals, and are afforded easily. Tony Earls, a residence supervisor at the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, is getting around these problems by having radio and television graduate students shoot a video using current students and campus scenes, such as the school cafeteria and residence halls, that other students will recognize. Sandra Caron at the University of Maine asked the campus media services department to produce her program's rape awareness video and then paid for the production later by offering the video for sale to other schools. However, the time and resources required to develop a quality video do not make it a viable option for most schools. As an alternative, Villari sometimes uses clips about acquaintance rape from television shows which, she says, can be very up-to-date and realistic. Skits Another alternative to using videos to stimulate discussion is to stage skits that can be tailored to the specific audience being addressed. At Brown University, trained peer educators improvise a short ten-minute theater piece with three scenes. In the first scene, two women get together with two men; in the second scene, they party and play drinking games, with one of the women getting drunk; in the third scene, one of the men takes the intoxicated woman to his room and rapes her. Other peer students play the actors' inner voices, saying aloud their thoughts and expressing their feelings during the action. A "fact person" provides data during the acting, such as "over 80 percent of acquaintance rapes involve drinking." After completion of the skit, the actors remain in character to answer questions from the audience. "Interactive skits are the most powerful approach for large, mixed-gender groups when small, single-sex group workshops are not feasible." - Alan Berkowitz, Director of the Hubbs Counseling Center, Hobart and William Smith Colleges At Ferris State University, new student peer educators view videotapes showing the skits that the previous year's peer educators used; the new peer educators then adapt these older skits to their own style and to current campus issues. The most talked about skit at Ferris State is one in which a man has already made the decision that he is going to "score" before he gets together with a woman and another couple for the evening. At Cornell, students from the theater arts department perform similar skits, with the actors remaining in character after the performance to answer questions. The actors then role model scenes in which alternative, positive behaviors on the part of the man and woman are illustrated. Toby Simon, Associate Dean of Student Life at Brown, reports that "Some universities might think that it is preferable to use students with some theatrical experience." Simon says that theatrical experience may in fact not be necessary because peer educators who are trained in sexual assault issues can perform the skits adequately. But, she warns, "if you are not using theater students, much time has to be spent teaching the educators how to project on stage and helping them stage the scenes."5 Small-Group Discussions All workshops involve some sort of discussion among students, including plenty of opportunity for questions. Most programs try to break students into small groups for more personal give-and-take. For example, the rape prevention workshop offered by Hobart College to all first-year students is conducted over a period of several evenings in residence halls with groups of only 15 to 20 students. Typically, the discussions revolve around what constitutes consent. At Brown, peer facilitators guide each small group to struggle with a definition of consent that all members can agree with, while peer leaders make clear that a drunken "yes" is not necessarily a real "yes." Most program administrators agree that, regardless of the workshops' content, small-group discussions will be most effective if students trained as peer facilitators, rather than staff, run the workshops. Using Peer Facilitators Another way to motivate students to attend workshops is to use other students as workshop leaders rather than adults, who may not attract much student interest. In addition, students who do attend may be more likely to listen to - and follow the guidance of - other students than heed messages from older adults.6 Using a control group, a graduate student compared the impact of three different acquaintance rape prevention formats for male students. The first group, held at Hobart College, was single-sex and used small groups, interactive techniques, and trained male peers as facilitators. The second program, held at another (unnamed) college, was also interactive and used small groups but was coed and used student service professionals as facilitators. The third program, implemented at still another school (also unnamed), was coed and used a large-group lecture format run by student services professionals. Researchers had the 694 participating students fill out a questionnaire about attitudes toward rape and women before and after the workshops. On the posttest, only the men in the Hobart program showed significant liberalization of attitudes compared with the other groups.7 Using students to facilitate workshops requires careful selection, thorough training, and ongoing staff supervision. Recruitment and Selection At Hobart College, peer facilitators are recruited each year from groups of student leaders and workshop audiences. Fifteen new student facilitators are divided into groups of three to four, with each group supervised by a staff member or professor. Each year, a core of five to ten experienced facilitators provides continuity for the program and helps train new members. At the University of Connecticut, the director of the Women's Center recruits student facilitators through a for-credit women's studies course that she offers specifically for training peer educators for the school's Violence Against Women Prevention Program. "The best recruiters for finding workshop leaders are peers - current student workshop facilitators and other students I know who tell me who would be good peer educators and which students I should not accept if they volunteer to join the program." - Sandra Caron, Associate Professor, University of Maine Toby Simon at Brown suggests that schools should "not be afraid to take advantage of an unfortunate situation which affects the school community. For example, if a fraternity member has been involved in a sexual assault case, a special visit can be paid to the house to recruit new [peer] educators.8 Some students become peer educators to include the activity on their resume. Programs can foster interest among other students by giving them considerable authority to decide how to run the workshops. Many students find this sense of ownership of the program and genuine responsibility for what they do very attractive. Programs need to be careful to screen out applicants with problematic motivations, such as hoping to use the program to resolve personal conflicts related to their own rape experience, and students with inappropriate attitudes, such as stereotyped views of the opposite sex. However, Brown University's Sexual Assault Peer Education program has no screening or selection process for potential student educators. Program staff feel that the training of the peer educators is education in itself, and that anyone who is interested should be able to participate in that experience. According to Toby Simon, "In the rare possibility that one of the peer educators is inappropriate for the 'job,' the decision on how to handle such a student rests with the school official who supervises the program."9 Students manage the University of Pennsylvania's Students Together Against Acquaintance Rape (STAAR). The program was founded in 1989 by two sophomore women who were dissatisfied that there was no sexual violence policy at the school and felt there was a need for more prevention education. Today, the expanded and ongoing group conducts peer education workshops for all incoming students and offers workshops throughout the academic year to student groups, area colleges, and local high schools. Comprised of about 20 female and male students, STAAR is managed by an egalitarian-style executive board of peer educators. Members of STAAR solicit invitations to run workshops and then schedule and conduct the workshops. However, the director of health education, Susan Villari, works very closely with the students, supervising all their activities and teaching them how to manage a program. As Villari explains, "I believe our model provides us with maximum effectiveness. Students have a tremendous amount of control, but they are monitored and advised each step of the way. They feel very independent yet supported at the same time." At the University of Virginia, a student political group, dissatisfied with the way the school was working to prevent sexual assault, started its own education programs for other students in a student-run peer education program called Sexual Assault: Facts & Education (SAFE). Members of SAFE telephone faculty, residence hall advisors, and Greeks, soliciting invitations to offer their workshop. Members also conduct the 25-hour training of new SAFE members. Training Training peer facilitators requires many hours to convey the pertinent content about sexual assault, explain how to facilitate an interactive group discussion, demonstrate how to run the workshop, and involve the would-be peer educators in role-playing situations that may arise during the course of a workshop. The following examples from three different schools suggest several peer training approaches: During simulated workshops at Cornell, peer educators act as the audience while their colleagues practice leading a session. Program administrators give someone in the audience a role profile card instructing him or her to play "the student from hell" so that the novice facilitators can gain experience and confidence handling the worst-case scenario. At Hobart, experienced facilitators from the previous year help train the new year's crop of peer facilitators. Training takes place at a series of four to six dinner meetings, which are followed by practice sessions. Following the formal training period, facilitators are broken into groups of three or four students who meet separately to develop different sections of the acquaintance rape workshop and to practice together. Before the first scheduled workshop, experienced facilitators present the entire workshop to the group in a dress rehearsal. At the University of Connecticut, new peer educators accompany experienced peer educators to residence halls to observe how workshops are run; then each new facilitator runs a few workshops in collaboration with an experienced facilitator; finally the new facilitators are sent out in pairs to run workshops themselves. Athletes and Greeks as Facilitators Several programs make a special effort to recruit athletes and Greeks as workshop facilitators because these students are usually individuals whom other students respect, regard as social heroes, and often recognize, if only by name or face. According to a student athlete facilitator at Hobart, "It is extremely convincing for first-year men to hear their social heroes, men who are not usually outspoken about curbing violence, say that acquaintance rape is something men should be discussing, more convincing than it is to hear staff or women students talk on the same issue."10 As a result, athletes may be particularly effective running workshops for other athletes. "When we ran the first workshop for the football team, the offensive unit was very defensive, while the defensive unit was very offensive. We have since used trained students to run the sessions, and these facilitators are much more effective." - Myra Hindus, Director of the Women's Center at the University of Connecticut At the University of Maine, Sandra Caron, a faculty member who teaches courses in human sexuality and family studies, initiated an acquaintance rape prevention program called Athletes for Sexual Responsibility that relies exclusively on varsity athletes as workshop facilitators. Her goal was "to capitalize on the high visibility of athletes, and their ability to set standards of behavior for other students, to use them as role models for appropriate social and sexual behavior." Caron also believes that using athletes makes it possible to help change campus norms about sexual behavior and drinking. When Caron first suggested the idea of running workshops to students in one of her sexual behavior classes, seven athletes came forward. Together, she and the students spent a semester in 1990 brainstorming the type of program they wanted and then recruited additional athletes until every one of the school's 18 varsity teams was represented in the group, including about equal numbers of men and women. One year, the varsity football quarterback became a peer educator. The 25 athletes in the current group share responsibility for conducting about 20 seminars a semester, sometimes two or three per week. Caron now recruits peer facilitators from the athletes in her classes on human sexuality. She also has friends in the athletic department who recommend players, and coaches post her recruitment notices in locker rooms. "Some students come to the workshops because they want to meet the varsity players. Others think, 'If they're into this, maybe I should be.'" - Sandra Caron, Associate Professor, University of Maine At Pennsylvania State University, with the largest Greek system in the country, the Interfraternity Council, along with the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, developed the new member education program that relies on fraternity brothers to lead group discussions on acquaintance rape every year with all pledges in the school's 58 fraternities. Sorority women participate in a similar program, led by sisters after their formal rush period. At the University of Georgia at Athens, fraternity members go to sororities and warn the women that some fraternity men may deliberately bring alcohol to parties in order to get the women drunk and, as a result, try to render them unable to resist the men's sexual advances. Sidebars Blaming the Victim? "We must all insist that men take responsibility for preventing rape while at the same time encouraging women to act to reduce their risk of being raped. While the latter part of this philosophy may . . . appear to promote victim- blaming, this is true only if we focus on women's risk-reduction without at the same time unambiguously and aggressively assigning responsibility and blame to the men who perpetrate [rape] and their peers who enable them . . . . [W]e must also encourage women to act in ways which will reduce their risk of being victimized without at the same time compromising their freedom of action and sense of agency." - Alan Berkowitz, Director, Counseling Center, Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Foreword to Carter, C. The Other Side of Silence: Women Tell about Their Experiences with Date Rape. Gisum, New Hampshire: Avocus Publishing, 1995 ----------------- A Dissenting View on Alcohol's Role A few schools separate the sexual assault issue from the use of alcohol. At the University of Michigan, the Sexual Assault Prevention Awareness Center found that students became very defensive about the link between alcohol and sexual assault and viewed them as separate topics. As a result, the center decided to hold separate workshops on each topic. In addition, according to Emberly Cross, the center's crisis line coordinator, staff feel that men use drinking as an excuse to commit acquaintance rape that they premeditate while sober. As a result, even if men stopped drinking, they would still assault women sexually. Cross says that dominance is the driving issue behind sexual assault. For example, men encourage women to drink so they cannot fight back. Consequently, acquaintance rape workshops, Cross feels, should address the power issue, not the drinking issue. Alan Berkowitz, director of the counseling center at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, disagrees: "Since the underlying issue is one of consent and abuse of power, programs should address the power issue and the alcohol issue." --------------- Workshop Outlines Many programs have outlines of their workshops and presentations. A few of them are listed below. ¤ Sex without Consent, Volume II: Peer Education Training for Colleges, 1993, by Toby B. Simon and Cathy A. Harris, $21.95. Learning Publications, Inc., 5351 Gulf Drive, P.O. Box 1338, Holmes Beach, Florida 34218-1238, (813) 778-6651. ¤ Acquaintance Rape and Sexual Assault Prevention Training Manual, Fourth Edition, 1990, by Andrea Parrot, $15.00. The Department of Human Services Studies, N132 MVR Hall, College of Human Ecology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, (607) 255-2512. ¤ Party Smartly: A Discussion [Guide] on Acquaintance Rape and Alcohol Use, by Diana Doyle, Director of Student Development, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado 80401-1887, (303) 273-3377. ¤ SAFER: Sexuality and AIDS Facts, Education, and Responsibility and I Never Called It Rape, a peer education program and workshop outline. Cornell University, Health Services, Gannett Health Center, 10 Central Avenue, Ithaca, New York 14853, (607) 255-4782. ¤ Acquaintance Rape Prevention Workshop Outline for Facilitators, in Men and Rape: Theory, Research, and Prevention Programs in Higher Education, edited by Alan Berkowitz, pp. 83-86, $15.95. Jossey-Bass Publishers, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco, California 94104-1342, (415) 433-1767. ¤ Date Rape Program Outline, Playing the Game Program Outline, and Orientation Outline: Playing the Game. Violence Against Women Prevention Program, Women's Center, University of Connecticut, 417 Whitney Road, U 118, Storrs, Connecticut 06269, (203) 486-4738. ----------- Workshop Outlines for Athletes ¤ Andrea Parrot, Nina Cummings, and Timothy Marchell, 1994, Rape 101: Sexual Assault Prevention for College Athletes. $21.95. Learning Publications, Inc., 5351 Gulf Drive, P.O. Box 1338, Holmes Beach, Florida 34218-1338, (813) 778-6651. ¤ Sexual Responsibility Assault Prevention and Safe Dating for Athletic Departments, by Tom Jackson. Clinical Training Program, Department of Psychology, 216 Memorial Hall, University of Arkansas, Fayettesville, Arkansas 72701-1201, (501) 575-4256. ----------- Information about Videotapes ¤ Playing the Game and the accompanying guidebook may be purchased from HealthVisions Inc., 15608 Peyton Court, Bowie, Maryland 20716, and from the National Interfraternity Conference, 3901 W. 86th St., Suite 390, Indianapolis, Indiana 46268-1791, (317) 872-1112. ¤ Other videos are reviewed and evaluated in Men and Rape: Theory, Research, and Prevention Programs in Higher Education, 1994, pp. 74-81. $15.95. Jossey-Bass Publishers, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco, California 94104-1342, (415) 433-1767. ---------- Sex-Segregated Groups or Mixed Groups? There are advantages to giving separate workshops to all-male and all- female audiences. According to Alan Berkowitz, Director of the Counseling Center at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, research results, although tentative, suggest that the single-sex format for men is more likely than coed workshops to produce consistently positive effects on men. Coed workshops may increase men's defensiveness, whereas all-male workshops allow men to speak openly, without fear of criticism from women, about attitudes and behaviors that may make them potential rapists. Coed discussion groups or workshops may also unintentionally reinforce differences between men and women, Berkowitz cautions. If that happens, the sessions may promote the perception that male-female relationships are adversarial in nature - a perception that is associated with men's increased tendency to commit rape. Berkowitz recommends that, if programs do use mixed-sex groups, coordinators and peer facilitators should make sure the workshops do not become adversarial, with each sex blaming the other for the problem. In addition, he adds, if coed groups are used, the needs of both sexes must be addressed - rape prevention for men and risk reduction for women. - Berkowitz, A.D. A Model Acquaintance Rape Prevention Program for Men. In Berkowitz, A.D. (ed.). Men and Rape: Theory, Research, and Prevention Programs in Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994, pp. 35-42. A benefit of heterogeneous groups is that men and women usually want - and need - to hear firsthand what the other sex thinks about various issues related to sexual assault and drinking. Reflecting this point of view, one student wrote in the comments section of her evaluation of the UCLA acquaintance rape workshop, "more discussions/forums with both sexes." Ultimately, men and women must learn to address these problems with each other, not just with members of their own sex. A study of 644 students who participated in more than 80 workshops at the University of South Florida found that only 1 in 10 men and fewer than 1 in 12 women reported being uncomfortable discussing acquaintance rape in mixed gender groups. Holcomb, D.R.; Sondag, K.A.; and Holcomb, L.H. Healthy dating: A mixed- gender date rape workshop. Journal of American College Health, 1993, 41:155- 157. While sometimes targeting a single fraternity or sorority, or a single- sex residence hall floor, the acquaintance rape program at the Colorado School of Mines also may pair a fraternity with a sorority, or a male residence hall floor with a female floor, in order to have a mixed-gender group. Time and space permitting, some schools first break the audience into separate gender discussion groups and then re-form the larger group for additional discussion. This is the approach suggested in the peer education program that accompanies the film Playing the Game. ---------------- Male Versus Female Facilitators When possible, have a male and female facilitator co-lead the workshop even when the audience consists entirely of just men or women. Diana Doyle at the Colorado School of Mines points out that "if the group is all male, one presenter needs to be male; otherwise, a lone female presenter is seen as women telling the guys what they're doing wrong. Having a male presenter removes the 'we versus them' attitude. But a female co-presenter is also needed to explain firsthand to the men how women feel and think about acquaintance rape. For similar reasons, a male presenter needs to be teamed with a female presenter for all-women groups, so the women can hear firsthand from a man the attitudes men have developed about sex and drinking, and can get answers to their questions about men's behavior from a man." Sandra Caron, at the University of Maine, gives the following reasons for using male-female teams to facilitate workshop discussions: - Using teams sends the message that "both men and women need to know about acquaintance rape." - Participants have a same-sex leader with whom to identify. - The team serves as role models, both individually and interpersonally, by exemplifying an open, equal, and nonsexual relationship. -------------- Student-Run Groups: A Mixed Blessing Claire Kaplan, Coordinator of Virginia's Sexual Assault Education Office, says there are advantages and disadvantages to student-run groups. On the positive side, student-run programs "give students a sense of empowerment and responsibility, and they promote the idea of students taking charge of their lives." On the negative side, "it's difficult to monitor student-run groups and know what they're doing. Usually, there is no faculty member or administrator observing the workshops. But knowing what is taking place is essential because, for example, student facilitators could become preachy in trying to prevent acquaintance rape." ------------ Peer Training Materials ¤ Sex without Consent: Peer Education Training for Colleges and Universities, by Toby Simon and Cathy Harris, 1993, $21.95. Learning Publications, Inc., 5351 Gulf Drive, P.O. Box 1338, Holmes Beach, Florida 34218-1238, (813) 778-6651. ¤ When a Kiss Is Not Just a Kiss: Sex Without Consent, a videotape and study guide by Toby Simon, is designed for use with students but may also be used for training peer facilitators. $98.00. Mumbleypeg Productions, 470 Park Avenue South, North Tower, 9th Floor, New York, New York 10016, (212) 251-8695. ¤ "Greek Peer Educator Program" and "Athletes for Sexual Responsibility," by Sandra L. Caron, two manuals of recruiting, training, and publicity materials for setting up and running peer workshops led by Greeks or by student athletes. Updated annually. Price varies. Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Room 5, 5749 Merrill Hall, University of Maine, Orono, Maine 04469-5749. ------------ Endnotes 1. For a summary of the research, see Berkowitz, A.D.; Burkhart, B.R.; and Bourg, S.E. Research on College Men and Rape. In Berkowitz, A.D. (ed.). Men and Rape: Theory, Research, and Prevention Programs in Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994, pp. 3-19. 2. Berkowitz et al., Research on College Men and Rape, p. 14. 3. Simon, A.K. Student Perspectives on Facilitating Rape Prevention Programs. In Berkowitz, A.D. (ed). Men and Rape: Theory, Research, and Prevention Programs in Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994, pp. 43-45. 4. Parrot, A.; Cummings, N.; Marchell, T.; and Hofher, J. A rape awareness and prevention model for male athletes. Journal of American College Health, 1994, 42:179-184. 5. Simon, T.B., and Harris, C.A. Sex Without Consent: Volume II. Peer Education Training for Colleges and Universities. Holmes Beach, Florida: Learning Publications, 1993. 6. Berkowitz, A.D. Reducing alcohol and other drug abuse on campus: Effective strategies for prevention programs. Eta Sigma Gamman, 1990, 22:12- 14; Bracht, N. (ed.). Health Promotion at the Community Level. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, 1990. 7. Earle, J.P. Acquaintance Rape Workshops: Their Effectiveness in Changing the Attitudes of First Year College Men. Thesis submitted to the University of Connecticut, 1992. Cited in, Berkowitz, A.D. A Model Acquaintance Rape Prevention Program for Men. In Berkowitz, A.D. (ed.), Men and Rape: Theory, Research, and Prevention Programs in Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994, pp. 35-42. 8. Simon, T.B., and Harris, C.A. Sex Without Consent. 9. Simon, T.B., and Harris, C.A. Sex Without Consent. 10. Simon, A.K. Student Perspectives on Facilitating Rape Prevention Programs. In Berkowitz, A.D. (ed.). Men and Rape: Theory, Research, and Prevention Programs in Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994, pp. 43-45. Chapter 6 Evaluating the Program Chapter Summary ¤ Program evaluation is usually critical for sustaining support from top school administrators and is always important for finding out how to improve program operations. ¤ A useful program evaluation requires the involvement of experts. Usually, faculty members or graduate students can provide the expertise at no cost. ¤ Program staff should start small - evaluate just a single program component, for example - and then, with experience, expand the evaluation. ¤ Program evaluation involves 13 discrete steps, all of which are important for obtaining useful findings. ¤ Perhaps the single most important evaluation step is to try to obtain a random sample of respondents to survey or events to observe. School administrators are more likely to provide long-term financial and other support for the program if staff can document positive results. Evaluation data can also suggest which elements of the program need to be modified, expanded, or jettisoned. School administrators may be still more inclined to continue supporting a program if the coordinator demonstrates a willingness to make these kinds of programming improvements. The process of conducting an evaluation also forces program staff to think systematically about what they are really trying to accomplish and whether the activities they are undertaking - or plan to implement - will truly help achieve their goals. Despite the vital need for evaluation, the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University reports that "there have been few reliable appraisals of what works and what does not" in alcohol programming at the postsecondary level.1 The same generalization applies to acquaintance rape programming. Few programs have the resources to conduct an experimental evaluation (that is, random assignment of students to control and treatment groups) so that the program's impact on participating students can be compared validly with changes among a group of students who have not been exposed to the program. Useful evaluations can still be made, however. To conduct a useful evaluation, program staff need to follow the 13 steps discussed below and presented in the checklist on the following page. However, these guidelines provide only a starting point for how to conduct an evaluation. Comprehensive evaluation information may be found in the publications listed in the box on page 55. 1. Decide What the Goals of the Evaluation Are The starting point of any evaluation is to decide what it is that program staff want to learn from the exercise. For example, is it to find out how to run the program with less funding? whether student attitudes toward sexual assault have changed? which program components are having an effect on acquaintance rape? whether fewer students are committing acquaintance rape because of the program as a whole? which program activities take up the majority of staff time? whether workshops for athletes are doing any good? whether evidence can be collected that will satisfy the college president that the program is worth maintaining? At this beginning stage, it is also critical to think about starting small. Rather than trying to evaluate the entire program (if it has several components) or trying to determine subtle changes in student attitudes, it is preferable to narrow the focus to evaluating one or two program components and to set realistic expectations about what to try to find out about them initially. Later, when program staff have some experience in conducting an evaluation, assessment activities can be expanded in terms of coverage and sophistication. Of course, if a program has already taken some evaluation steps or has access to experts who can do a comprehensive evaluation for the program (see step 3 below), it is fine to think big. In implementing the evaluation guidelines which follow, it is important to differentiate between whether it is a single activity (e.g., workshops for athletes) that is being evaluated or the program's entire range of services as a whole. 2. Identify Who Will Want the Evaluation Results, and Determine What Each Audience Wants to Learn from Them Different audiences for the evaluation results may be interested in different types of findings. For example: The school president may be interested primarily in learning whether the number of highly publicized acquaintance rape cases has been reduced. The funding source for the program may want to know what resources (money and staff hours) are expended for each program component or for each student served. The Greek coordinator, who may have mandated attendance at program workshops, may be concerned about whether there is evidence that the attitudes of fraternity and sorority members who attended the program's workshops changed as a result of their participation. Faculty may wish to find out how many other faculty members gave up a class period to host the program and what the results were of the program's use of the time. Other possible audiences to consider in deciding what evaluation data to collect include federal, state, and local officials; program coordinators at other schools; community leaders; alumni; applicants to the school and their families; and the general public. The student body as a whole is almost always an important audience because evaluation findings, if properly presented, can help dispel student misperceptions about the prevalence or acceptability of acquaintance rape and alcohol misuse. 3. Decide Who Is Going To Conduct the Evaluation Either program staff or an independent evaluator can perform the evaluation. If program staff do it, they of course have control over the entire process, including timelines. However, devoting the necessary time to conduct a useful evaluation will reduce the time they can spend on other program activities and may provide a temptation to take short cuts in conducting the evaluation. Program staff may also have such a strong vested interest in demonstrating that the program is effective that they cannot conduct an objective evaluation. Using an outside evaluator has the advantage of reducing the burden on program staff and usually results in a more objective - and believable - report. However, outside evaluators may have their own biases, including a wish to please the program staff by being able to report positive results. In most cases, programs will not have the funds to afford an evaluator from outside the school. However, it may be possible to find a faculty member with evaluation expertise who will conduct, or assist, in the evaluation, particularly faculty from departments of public policy and public administration, public health, criminology and criminal justice, education, human ecology, psychology, sociology, and statistics. As an incentive to participate, programs can offer faculty use of the evaluation data for possible publishable research. Alternatively, a faculty member may be able to arrange for undergraduate or graduate students to do the evaluation as a class project or as a dissertation. A state or local agency may be interested in conducting, or helping to conduct, the evaluation, including the Single State Agency for substance abuse, the state or local department of human (or social) services, or the state criminal justice planning agency. Program staff and an outside evaluator can collaborate in the assessment - indeed, some degree of working together is obviously necessary - but this approach may result in disagreements over procedures and interpretation of the results that take time to resolve. 4. Decide Whether To Conduct a Process Evaluation, Summative Evaluation, or Both This step answers the question, "Why is the evaluation being conducted?" A process evaluation, sometimes called a formative evaluation, is designed to determine whether the program is operating in the manner that was intended. The purpose is to provide guidance for improving program operating procedures. A process evaluation does not indicate whether the program has achieved its goals. However, a process evaluation can shed light on why the program's goals were or were not achieved. The box on page 58 suggests the types of questions a process evaluation might be designed to answer. After program staff have selected the questions they want the process evaluation to answer, it is a good idea to submit the list to the evaluation's intended audiences so that these groups may identify the questions that are of most importance to them and suggest any additional questions to add. A summative evaluation, sometimes called an outcome or impact evaluation, is intended to find out whether the program achieved its goals and objectives with regard to changing the target population's knowledge, attitudes, or behavior. Goals refer to the broad achievements the program is expected to bring about; objectives refer to the specific accomplishments under each goal that the program is intended to produce. To conduct a useful summative evaluation, the program coordinator must develop clear goals and objectives, preferably before the program begins or as soon as possible thereafter. Always phrase objectives in terms that can be measured; specify the period of time by which the objective will be achieved; and identify the place or conditions in which the objective will be achieved (see the box below). The following are illustrative goals and objectives for an acquaintance rape program: Goal #1: To reduce the climate of tolerance on campus for acquaintance rape. Objectives: (a) The percentage of fraternity members who agree that students who commit acquaintance rape should be suspended or expelled will increase by at least 20 percent after 12 months of program operation. (b) The percentage of students who express myths about rape (e.g., "she didn't really mean 'no'") decreases by at least 33 percent. (c) This year, twice as many students as last year anonymously report sexual assault problems at on-campus parties. Goal #2: To reduce the number of acquaintance rapes. Objectives: (a) The number of acquaintance rape incidents campuswide will decline by at least 33 percent over the next 3 years. (b) The number of attempted acquaintance rapes campuswide will decline by at least 25 percent over the next 3 years. 5. Select Measures of Effectiveness Evaluators must decide what they will accept as evidence of success. Ideally, the actual behavior in question should be observed - or, in the case of acquaintance rape, the absence of the behavior. This can be done through participant observation, as when students report on what takes place at fraternity parties before and after the program began. Often, however, all that can be measured are proxies, that is, substitute evidence that empirical research has shown or suggests may be associated with the desired change in behavior. For example, evaluators measure changes in student knowledge and attitudes about acquaintance rape because they assume that cognitive and attitudinal changes will result in, or follow, reductions in acquaintance rape. Examples of important evidence suggesting that the program may have changed student behavior are the following: decreased support for rape myths (e.g., for men, "no doesn't mean no"; for women, "I was drinking, so it's my fault); increased willingness among men to censure acquaintance rape; improved understanding among men of the conditions of consent; and increased knowledge among women about the risk factors associated with acquaintance rape. Measures of effectiveness can be quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative data can be counted (e.g., the number of acquaintance rapes). Qualitative data cannot be counted but can help explain the program's impact (e.g., students may report that it was the school's new policy of expelling rapists that motivated them to behave). In general, programs should use both quantitative and qualitative measures. Indeed, resources permitting, the more different measures of success that can be examined, the easier it will be to draw reliable conclusions about program effectiveness. However, it is also important not to collect any data that will not serve an important evaluation or public relations purpose. Parsimony in collecting data avoids squandering scarce program resources and burdening respondents with needless questions. 6. Decide How To Select Respondents The biggest mistake some schools make in conducting surveys is to rely on a convenience sample - polling only those students who can be easily contacted through courses or an on-campus organization. The advantage of using a random sample survey - ensuring that the survey results are representative of the student body as a whole - makes the extra work involved well worth the effort. The first step in selecting a random sample is to find a way to identify all potential respondents. Usually, the school's official enrollment list, if it has accurate mailing addresses and telephone numbers, can serve this purpose for surveying students. Similar lists can be used for polling faculty, security officers, and the like. The second step is to pick a random sample of students from the list. One way to do this is to randomly pick a starting point on the list and then pick every 5th, or 11th, or 56th name (depending on the total sample size needed). However, this method of randomly selecting students can be done only if the list does not have an underlying structure (for example, every 7th student is a resident hall advisor or fraternity member). When a college or university has a computer-based student records system, evaluators can use a computer program to generate the random sample. At other schools, and for other audiences, a social science researcher on the faculty can explain how to use a random numbers table to pick the sample. If it is necessary to gather information from students in the classroom, representativeness can be increased by including both small and large classes, classes from different disciplines, day and evening classes, and other approaches to make sure all relevant types of students are reached (e.g., commuters, freshman, students who take difficult courses). However, care must be taken not to include the same student more than once in the survey. 7. Select Measurement Methods Program staff or evaluators next need to decide what data collection approaches to use. Which methods to use will depend, in part, on how feasible they are to implement at a particular school, how much labor and money they require, and, above all, whether they are likely to provide the information needed to assess whether each objective has been achieved. In general, resources permitting, the more data sources and data collection methods used, the more confidence the program can place in the findings. The following are among the data collection methods programs can use: Student surveys. Surveys can be conducted in person, by mail, or by telephone. A critical question with all three types of survey is whether it is possible to find a comparison group of students who have not been exposed to the program or to a particular program activity. Without this comparison group, it is difficult to determine whether it was the program (or activity) that caused the desired changes as opposed to something else that occurred on campus, such as a highly publicized prosecution of a student rapist. A comparison group will be impossible to find, however, if the program targets students all over campus. But if the program conducts its activities in specific locations, such as dormitories or fraternities, then it is possible to compare the program's impact on students from a participating dormitory with students in a similar, but nonparticipating, dormitory. Even without a comparison group, it is still worthwhile to conduct a before-and-after survey that assesses change in student knowledge, attitudes, or behavior. Records analysis (also called archival data analysis). Where permitted, and only when confidentiality can be guaranteed, examination of police records, emergency ward admission records, school administrative records, fraternity and sorority records, and other written materials can help determine whether a program has achieved its objectives. Key informant interviews. It can be useful to ask individuals who have first-hand knowledge of student knowledge, attitudes, or behavior, what changes they have seen among students. Key informants for evaluating an acquaintance rape program might include student government leaders, health services personnel, campus security personnel, local law enforcement officers, and local bartenders, waiters, and waitresses. Students themselves, such as residence hall advisors, can be valuable key informants. While key informants can be interviewed individually, they can also be brought together for an informal focus group in which eight-to-twelve of them meet for 60-90 minutes to respond to in-depth questions about how they think student attitudes or behaviors have changed as a result of the program. Key informants are always somewhat unreliable, however, because they can report on only the events or words they happen to see or hear, and these occurrences and statements may be atypical. Anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is also unreliable because it relies on whatever someone happens to hear or see by accident. These isolated events may not be typical of the program's total impact. Nonetheless, as one of several data collection approaches, anecdotal evidence can help confirm that a program is effective (see the box). 8. Develop Data Collection Instruments Designing data collection instruments, whether they are telephone interview guides or observation checklists, may seem simple. In fact, it requires considerable experience. Data collection results can be useless or incomplete if the survey instruments are not carefully constructed. Experts among the school faculty may be willing to assist in designing the instruments. Pilot test each instrument with a small sample of the intended respondents before using it. (Do not include the individuals who responded to the pilot test in the ultimate data collection effort.) Follow the principle of parsimony discussed above for keeping the instruments as short as possible. A simple questionnaire given to all students to fill out initially after a workshop, and then again one month and six months after the workshop, can provide useful information for improving the session. An illustrative questionnaire is provided pages 63 and 64. The box on page 62 provides references to more sophisticated questionnaires. 9. Decide How Many Respondents To Contact or Events To Observe This decision involves the technical and tricky problem of sampling: making sure that enough people or events are included to make the findings statistically significant, but ensuring that no resources are wasted surveying too many people or events. Evaluators must always make trade-offs between how much time or money they can spend on the sample size and what quantity of information will enable them to have confidence in their conclusions. The publication, Assessing Alcohol-Related Problems on Campus, listed previously in the box, provides guidelines for determining the correct sample size. Brown University telephones a random sample of 15-20 percent of workshop participants a few weeks after a workshop to ask them whether they benefitted from the presentation and how they think it could be improved. Callers also ask the students to define first-degree sexual assault in order to assess whether the workshop helped clarify what constitutes acquaintance rape. 10. Decide When To Collect the Data Baseline data collection. Program staff cannot determine whether their efforts have resulted in desired changes unless they know what information, attitudes, and behaviors students exhibited before the program began or before a new intervention was launched. Programs should collect baseline data in exactly the same manner they plan to collect their process or summative evaluation data. For example, if focus groups with students, interviews with health personnel, and examination of school and police reports will be used to determine whether acquaintance rape has declined, these same data collection approaches should also be used to collect baseline data. That way the results will be comparable. For the same reason, programs should also use the same data collection instruments for the baseline and all subsequent data collection surveys. Post-intervention data collection. Ideally, for impact evaluation purposes, programs should collect data from participants and nonparticipants immediately after each program activity and then periodically at regularly scheduled intervals, such as every six or twelve months. The reasons for collecting data on several occasions are to determine whether the program's effects decay over time and to be able to document trends. One-time data collection may sometimes be sufficient for process evaluation purposes. The University of San Diego waits until January, six months after freshman orientation, to send a questionnaire to a random sample of one-third of its freshmen asking their reactions to the school's orientation week sexual assault workshop. 11. Collect the Data Programs can collect data through in-person interviews, by mail, by telephone, and through direct observation. The two keys to successful data collection are to use approaches that (a) guarantee as high a response rate as possible and (b) ensure the respondents' anonymity. For example, because the University of San Diego conducts follow-up calls to students who fail to return its mail questionnaire, more than half the students end up mailing back the questionnaire. Assessing Alcohol-Related Problems on Campus (see the box) discusses techniques for maximizing response rates and anonymity. A third important element in collecting accurate and complete data is the skill of the data collectors. Training is essential. Again, appropriate faculty members can be enlisted to provide the training. 12. Analyze the Data Most programs will need to do only two types of data analysis to get a satisfactory understanding of acquaintance rape at their schools: descriptive statistics and tests of association. Descriptive statistics summarize the respondents' answers, as in the finding that "24 percent of the students surveyed after the program had been operational for a year reported they had objected at least once to another student's sexual coercion compared with 12 percent of students who objected before the program began." Tests of association, such as the chi-square test, examine the strength of a relationship between two variables. For example, the program may wish to determine whether a disproportionate number of students who have committed acquaintance rape are athletes or fraternity members. 13. Interpret and Report the Results Data interpretation should always begin and end with a complete understanding of the limitations of the evaluation. For example, while it is a good idea to monitor the number of women who bring charges of sexual assault and compare the number over time, the results must be interpreted with caution. As Toby Simon at Brown says, "Fewer women came forward with charges of sexual misconduct this year, but I can't say why." In fact, as acquaintance rape becomes a topic of discussion because of the program, the number of reported rapes may increase for a few years. This and other caveats should be clearly discussed in every evaluation report. It is also important to be careful about comparing one school's evaluation results with another school's findings. For example, there will always be wide variations in the number and percentage of acquaintance rapes among schools because of such differences as the number of students living on- campus, the male-female ratio, the religious orientation of the school, the percentage of married students, and the school's geographic location and enrollment. Programs should not compare their success rate with that of other schools without taking into account the nature of the schools and their student bodies. Evaluation reports are written differently for different audiences. Sometimes it is useful to prepare two or more evaluation reports, with each report targeted to a different audience. For example, the school president, vice presidents, and deans may be interested in only certain types of findings, while faculty, alumni, or students may be interested in other results. Different audiences may also have different levels of interest in reading statistical analyses and technical terminology. Some readers like lots of charts and figures; others prefer text. Program staff should also find out whether administrators have any concerns about publicizing findings that appear to reflect badly on the school. For most audiences, evaluation reports should conclude with recommendations, based on the findings, about needed changes in the program and about actions that other individuals on campus can take to help prevent acquaintance rape. Sidebars Checklist of Steps for Evaluating the Program or Program Activity ¬ 1. Decide on the evaluation's goals ¬ 2. Identify the evaluation's audience(s) ¬ president, vice presidents, deans? ¬ faculty? ¬ Greek coordinator? ¬ athletic department? ¬ other school departments or divisions? ¬ government officials? ¬ program coordinators at other schools? ¬ community leaders? ¬ alumni? ¬ applicants and their families? ¬ the general public? ¬ 3. Decide who will conduct the evaluation ¬ program staff? ¬ outside evaluator? ¬ both collaborate? ¬ 4. Decide on type of evaluation ¬ process (formative) evaluation? ¬ summative (impact, outcome) evaluation? ¬ 5. Select measures of effectiveness ¬ direct observation of behavior? ¬ proxies for behavior change? ¬ quantitative? ¬ qualitative? ¬ 6. Decide how to select respondents ¬ random sampling? ¬ convenience samples? ¬ 7. Select measurement methods ¬ surveys? ¬ records (archival) analysis? ¬ key informant interviews? ¬ anecdotal evidence? ¬ 8. Develop data collection instruments ¬ 9. Decide how many respondents to contact or events to observe ¬ 10. Decide when to collect the data ¬ collect baseline data? ¬ collect post-intervention data? ¬ collect data at atypical times? ¬ 11. Collect the data ¬ guarantee a high response rate ¬ ensure respondents' anonymity ¬ use trained data collectors ¬ 12. Analyze the data ¬ use descriptive statistics ¬ consider tests of association ¬ 13. Interpret and report the results ¬ clarify the evaluation's limitations ¬ avoid comparisons with other schools ¬ tailor the report or reports to the intended readership ¬ conclude with recommendations ---------------- Comprehensive Evaluation Guides How Good Is Your Drug Abuse Treatment Program? A Guide to Evaluation. National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH Publication No. 93-3609. Although geared toward drug treatment programs, the evaluation guidelines can be adapted easily to an acquaintance rape program. Single copies free. National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information in Rockville, Maryland 20847-2345; (800) 729-6686. Handbook on Evaluating Your College Alcohol Prevention Program by William DeJong. U.S. Department of Education, forthcoming, 1996. Although not designed specifically for evaluating an acquaintance rape program, the evaluation guidelines in this publication, too, can be easily adapted for that purpose. Single copies free. Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Drug Prevention, 4800 Montgomery Lane, Suite 600 Bethesda, Maryland 20814 Attention: Kathy Mion, (800) 676-1730, (301) 492-5336 in Maryland; fax: (301) 718-3108; Internet: kathy_mion@abtassoc.com ---------------- Consult with Students Students should be asked what they think would be reliable ways of assessing whether their knowledge, attitudes, or behavior regarding acquaintance rape and alcohol have changed. Since many students may not be candid about providing information about their attitudes and behavior related to sex and drinking as part of a survey, they may be in the best position to provide suggestions for evaluation approaches that would make them feel most comfortable giving honest answers. ------------- A Process Evaluation Should Result in Program Change The University of San Diego sent a questionnaire to a random sample of one- third of its freshman asking their reactions to the school's orientation week sexual assault workshop. One finding from the survey was that some students who had been victims of sexual assault said the orientation workshop had such a strong impact on them that they wanted to reveal their experience but were concerned about how other students might react to the disclosure. They reported that, because they had no idea that the orientation would cover such intimate and powerful issues, they had no opportunity to prepare emotionally for how they might react. As a result, the following year the program made sure that incoming freshmen learned in advance exactly what the workshops would cover. (Apparently, many students did not read the descriptive flyer that had been circulated.) The program also made clear that students could come to the Healthy Lifestyles office to discuss any personal experiences rather than feel compelled to disclose them during the workshops. Feedback on the questionnaires also suggested the need to prepare the small group student facilitators more thoroughly on telling participants about the campus resources available for victims of sexual assault. ------------- Where Has the Problem Been Reduced? Evidence of program effectiveness will be more compelling if it can be shown that charges of acquaintance rape declined at a specific residence hall, fraternity house, or event which in the past had been regularly associated with multiple sexual assaults. For example, after Brown University cracked down on spring weekend drinking activities in 1994, not only were there fewer noise disturbances and runs to the emergency ward than in previous years, but also for the first time there were no accusations of sexual misconduct. --------------- Questions a Process Evaluation Might Address Regarding the Program's Target Audience and Outreach Effort - What approaches did the program use to reach students? - What problems, if any, were associated with implementing these approaches? - Which outreach approaches should be changed or added? - How many students did the program reach? - How many students did the program plan to reach? - How many of each kind of student were reached (e.g., athletes, Greeks, commuters)? - How many students (and types of students) were reached by each type of program activity (e.g., workshop, student orientation lecture) - How do these figures compare with the number and type of students the program intended to reach with each activity? - What percentage of the total population of students and the total number of each type of student enrolled in the school do these figures represent? - How many staff hours, program dollars, or other types of resources were required to reach each student or type of student? - What were the significant factors that facilitated and impeded the program's attempts to meet its target goals? That is, what activities did the program undertake, and how successful was each, in making it possible to reach the targeted number of students? Regarding Program Activities - What program activities did the program initially plan to develop and offer? - What program activities were actually started, improved, or expanded? What did each activity involve? - How many of each type of activity (e.g., workshop, orientation lecture) did the program conduct? - What accounts for any discrepancy between planned and actual program activities? - What were the significant factors that facilitated or impeded the program's ability to begin, improve, or expand each activity? - What were the immediate objectives of each activity (e.g., involve students in role play exercises; stimulate debate between male and female students)? - To what extent were these immediate objectives achieved? - What facilitated or impeded the achievement of these immediate objectives? - How do these numbers compare with the number of activities the program intended to conduct? Regarding Program Staff and Resources - How many staff - both paid and volunteer - worked for the program? - What amount of time and types of services did each person contribute to the program? to each activity? - Were the staff adequate for the work required in terms of background, skills, and numbers? - Were the program facilities (office space, supplies, etc.) adequate? What else is needed by way of facilities and why? - How much money (labor and direct costs) was spent on each discrete program activity - for example, for running workshops, for doing the acquaintance rape week, and for getting faculty to allow a presentation in their classrooms? How much money was expended per workshop? --------------- Cornell's Student Survey Cornell's program uses a ten-question pre/post questionnaire to assess attitude change among a sample of 600 students toward sexual assault and drinking before and after freshman orientation workshops. According to Nina Cummings, the results have shown "a definite change in attitudes among the men and women toward men's responsibility for hearing and respecting a woman's not wanting to have sex. However, the evidence that attitudes toward drinking had changed was ambiguous. For example, the students still felt that women should drink as much as they want despite the increased risk of assault if they become intoxicated." ---------------- Using Focus Groups The University of Michigan conducted focus groups with two groups of students to probe more deeply for reactions to the acquaintance rape workshops they attended. A master's level social work intern moderated the groups. One change staff made in the program as a result of the groups was to have victims tell their own stories at the workshops rather than have the staff show a video. ---------------- Anecdotal Evidence Can Be Suggestive After each year's freshman orientation at the University of San Diego, a few male students telephone to say they did not realize they had committed rape and to share their guilt feelings after learning they had done so. As one student said, "I wasn't trying to hurt anyone, I was just trying to score." Claire Kaplan, Coordinator of the University of Virginia's Sexual Assault Education Office, tells how she received a telephone call from a pledge "asking for help with his violence problem because other fraternity members who were making the decision about whether to accept him had told him he had a problem with violence and alcohol and that he could not join unless he dealt with both problems." Members of another fraternity came to Kaplan in person to report that a recently admitted brother had committed acquaintance rape and to ask what they could do about him. According to Kaplan, the students came to her because "they were frightened by what their brother had done and concerned he might do it again. They were also concerned with their legal liability. Because of our workshops, the students felt that our program was a safe place to come and that we would have the answer to their question." Kaplan connected the students to a health counselor, but the students subsequently expelled the brother from the fraternity. ----------------- Evaluation Questionnaires Koss, M.P. and Oros, C.J. (1982). Sexual experiences survey: A research instrument investigating sexual aggression and victimization. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 50(3), 455-457. Malamuth, N.M. (1989). The attraction to sexual aggression scale: Part one. Journal of Sex Research, 26, 26-49; Part two. Journal of Sex Research, 26, 324-354. Spence, J.T., and Helmreich, R. (1972). The attitudes toward women scale: An objective instrument to measure attitudes toward the rights and roles of women in contemporary society. JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 2, 1-48. Ward, C. (1988). The attitudes toward rape victims scale. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 12, 127-146. - Cited in Andrea Parrot. Acquaintance Rape and Sexual Assault Training Manual. Fourth Edition. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, 1990. ----------------- Illustrative Workshop Evaluation Questionnaire* Directions: Please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with each statement below by circling the number that corresponds to your opinion. Use the following rating scale: 1 = Disagree Completely 2 = Disagree Somewhat 3 = Undecided 4 = Agree Somewhat 5 = Agree Completely Please circle your: sex (M or F); year (f, so, j, se) Please indicate your age ____ Question Disagree Undecided Agree 1. I learned new information about rape. 1 2 3 4 5 2. When a man has sex with a woman who is 1 2 3 4 5 drunk, it's a crime. 3. When a man has sex with a women who says 1 2 3 4 5 "No" but doesn't resist, it's a crime. 4. I will change my sexual behavior because 1 2 3 4 5 of what I learned at the workshop. 5. I am now more likely to speak out against 1 2 3 4 5 acquaintance rape. 6. I was bored during the workshop. 1 2 3 4 5 7. The workshop was too long. 1 2 3 4 5 8. The workshop was too short. 1 2 3 4 5 9. The trainers were well informed. 1 2 3 4 5 10. The trainers were good group 1 2 3 4 5 facilitators. * These questions assume that students have been exposed to information and exercises that pertain to each question. If the program addresses other issues with students, additional questions should be added to or substituted for these questions to reflect the actual information conveyed and specific attitudinal and behavioral changes the program was seeking to promote. ------------- Illustrative Workshop Evaluation Questionnaire (continued) Other Reactions 11. The part of the workshop I liked best was:_________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 12. The part of the workshop I disliked the most was:_________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 13. In future workshops, you should:______________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 14. Other comments I have are:_________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ -------------- When Should the Data Be Collected? The exact timing of each data collection effort is very important. For example, because student attitudes and behavior may not be typical, or because absenteeism may be a problem, it would be unwise to collect data during examination period, spring weekend, graduation week, fraternity and sorority rush, or the weekend of a big campus event (e.g., football game, winter carnival). Of course, there may be a benefit to collecting data at some of these times when the purpose is to measure acquaintance rape during periods of high risk. The point is to be aware of times when responses may be atypical and then decide whether data collected at these times would be useful to analyze. --------------- Endnote 1. Rethinking Rites of Passage: Substance Abuse on America's Campuses. A Report by the Commission on Substance Abuse at Colleges and Universities. New York: Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, June 1994. Appendix Summary of Resources Sources of additional assistance, including publications, videos, and individuals, are cited throughout this publication in footnotes, sidebars, and the text. Below is a compilation of the documents mentioned in this publication that are useful resources in developing, expanding, or improving activities targeted at acquaintance rape. The list is followed by information about the U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention. The appendix concludes with the names and telephone numbers of program coordinators mentioned in the text who have agreed to discuss their programs on the phone. Publications Workshop Materials Sex without Consent. Volume II. Peer Education Training for Colleges, by Toby B. Simon and Cathy A. Harris, 1993. Learning Publications, Inc., 5351 Gulf Drive, P.O. Box 1338, Holmes Beach, Florida 34218-1238, (813) 778- 6651. $21.95. Acquaintance Rape and Sexual Assault Prevention Training Manual, Fourth Edition, by Andrea Parrot, 1990. The Department of Human Services Studies, N132 MVR Hall, College of Human Ecology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, (607) 255-2512. $15.00. Party Smartly: A Discussion [guide] on Acquaintance Rape and Alcohol Use, by Diana Doyle. Director of Student Development, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado 80401-1887, (303) 273-3377. SAFER: Sexuality and AIDS Facts, Education, and Responsibility, a peer education program. Cornell University, Health Services, Gannett Health Center, 10 Central Avenue, Ithaca, New York 14853, (607) 255-4782. Acquaintance Rape Prevention Workshop Outline for Facilitators, in Men and Rape: Theory, Research, and Prevention Programs in Higher Education, edited by Alan Berkowitz, 1994, pp. 83-86. Jossey-Bass Publishers, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco, California 94104-1342, (415) 433-1767. $15.95. Date Rape Program Outline; Playing the Game Program Outline; and Orientation Outline: Playing the Game. Violence Against Women Prevention Program, Women's Center, University of Connecticut, 417 Whitney Road, U 118, Storrs, Connecticut 06269, (203) 486-4738. Athletes for Sexual Responsibility and Greek Peer Educator Program, by Sandra Caron, two peer education programs. Department of Human Development and Family Studies, University of Maine, 5749 Merrill Hall, Orono, Maine 04469, (207) 581-3138. Implementation Guides Building a Community Intolerant of Rape, by students at the University of Pennsylvania. Available from Student Health Service, Box 745, HUP, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4283, (215) 573-3525. Setting Policies for Reducing Alcohol and Other Drug Problems on Campus: A Guide for School Administrators. 1995. Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of Education, (800) 676-1730; (301) 492-5336 in Maryland. Single copies free. · College Alcohol Risk Assessment Guide. 1994. La Jolla, California, Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Studies, UCSD Extension, University of California, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093, (619) 458-4306. Single copies free. · Strategic Planning Workbook for Nonprofit Organizations. Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, 1986, 919 Lafond Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota 55105, (612) 642-4025. $27.00. Evaluation Resources · FIPSE Training Manual, edited by Lavona Grow, pp. 405-437. 1994. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C. 20202. · Understanding Evaluation: The Way to Better Prevention Programs by Lana D. Muraskin. 1993. U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C. 20202. · IOX Assessment Associates: Program Evaluation Handbook: Drug Abuse Education. 1988. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control, Center for Health Promotion and Education, Atlanta, Georgia 30333. · Handbook for Evaluating Drug and Alcohol Prevention Programs: Staff/Team Evaluation of Prevention Programs (STEPP) (DHHS Publication No. 87-1512), by David J. Hawkins and Britt Nederhood. 1987. National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information, P.O. Box 2345, Rockville, Maryland 20847-2345, (800) 487-4889, single copies free. Information about Videotapes ¥Several videos are reviewed and evaluated in Men and Rape: Theory, Research, and Prevention Programs in Higher Education, pp. 74-81, cited above. College and University Administrators and Program Coordinators following individuals who provided information included in this guide have agreed to answer questions about their acquaintance rape prevention programs. Beratta, Jeanine, Director Office of Judicial Affairs for Student Life Northeastern University 307 Ell Building 360 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02115 (617) 373-4390 Berkowitz, Alan, Ph.D. Director Hubbs Counseling Center Hobart and William Smith Colleges Geneva, NY 14456 (315) 781-3600 Campbell, Paul V., Ph.D. Professor of Criminal Justice Wayne State College Division of Social Sciences Wayne, NE 68787 (402) 375-7297 Caron, Sandra L., Ph.D. Associate Professor of Family Relations/ Human Sexuality University of Maine Orono, ME 04469 (207) 581-3138 Cecil, Darren Director Office of Drug and Alcohol Education University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 (619) 260-4618 Chinquini-Goodman, Eve, Coordinator University of New Hampshire Sexual Harassment and Rape Prevention Program 105 Huddleston Hall 73 Main Street Durham, NH 03824-3532 (603) 862-3494 Cross, Emberly Crisis Line Coordinator Sexual Assault and Prevention Awareness Center University of Michigan 580 Union Drive Room L 107 Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1346 (313) 763-5865 Cummings, Nina Sexuality/Sexual Assault Educator Health Education Cornell University Health Services Gannett Health Center 10 Central Avenue Ithaca, New York 14853 (607) 255-4782 Doyle, Diana, Ph.D. Director of Student Development Colorado School of Mines Golden, Colorado 80401-1887 (303) 273-3377 Earley, Cathy National Interfraternity Conference, Inc. 2901 West 86th Street Suite 390 Indianapolis, IN 46268 (317) 872-1112 Fabiano, Patricia Associate Director for Counseling, Health, and Welfare Services Wellness Center Western Washington University Bellingham, WA 98225-9091 (206) 650-3074 Funk, Richard B. Coordinator of Greek Life The Pennsylvania State University 214 Hetzel Union Building University Park, Pennsylvania 16802 (814) 863-8065 Hart, Karen J. Assistant Director Illinois State University Office of Student Life 387 Student Services Building 2700 Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790-2700 (309) 438-2151 Hindus, Myra, Director Women's Center University of Connecticut 417 Whitney Road U-118 Storrs, CT 06269-1118 (203) 486-4738 Kaplan, Claire, Coordinator Sexual Assault Education University of Virginia Box 323 Health Sciences Center (HSC) Charlottesville, VA 22908 (804) 982-2774 Loser, Teresa Dean Fraternity and Sorority Affairs Rutgers University 15 Bartlett Street New Brunswick, NJ 08903 (908) 932-7692 Parrot, Andrea, Ph.D. Associate Professor College of Human Ecology Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 (607) 255-2512 Moon, John 137 Main Street Bangor, ME 04401 (207) 942-1173 Nelson, Mark D. Muskingum College Student Life Office New Concord, OH 43762 (614) 826-8211 Presley, Cheryl, Ph.D., Director Core Institute Center for Alcohol and Drug Studies Student Health Program Southern Illinois University Carbondale, IL 62901 (618) 453-4427 Reynolds, Candyce Portland State University CAPS P.O. Box 751 Portland, OR 97207-0751 (503) 725-5305 Rose-Mockry, Kathy Director, Women's Resource Center University of California at Los Angeles 2 Dodd Hall 405 Hilgard Avenue Los Angeles, California 90024-1453 (310) 825-8822 Satterlee, Christa Victim's Advocate/Prevention Educator Students Preventing Acquaintance Rape Ferris State University/Counseling Center 805 Campus Drive 221 Rankin Center Big Rapids, MI 49307-2226 (616) 592-5968 Siegel, Dorothy, Ph.D., Vice President Student Services Towson State University 8000 York Road Administration Building, Room 107 Towson, MD 21204 (410) 830-2055 Simon, Toby Associate Dean of Student Life P.O. Box P Brown University Providence, RI 02912 (401) 863-3145 Sisson, Shamim Assistant Dean of Students University of Virginia Office of the Dean of Students Box 708, Newcomb Hall Station Charlottesville, VA 22904 (804) 924-7430 Villari, Susan Director, Health Education Student Health Service University of Pennsylvania Box 745, HUP Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4283 (215) 573-3525. Walsh, Skip Residence Life University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 (619) 260-8888 Westol, David L., J.D. Executive Director Theta Chi Fraternity 3330 Founders Road Indianapolis, IN 46268-1333 (317) 824-1881 Index A Acquaintance rape alcohol, role of, 1-2, 1-14, 43-44 athletes, 32-33 definition, 11 fraternities, 29-30 Administrators - See Presidents Alcohol literature, 13 role in acquaintance rape, 1-2, 12-14, 43-44 Athletes as target audience, 32-33 as peer facilitators, 51-52 gaining access to, 38 workshop outlines, 45-67 Attendance encouraging, 37-38 Awareness week activities, 35-36 pros and cons, 35 C Classroom presentations, 35 Collaboration importance of, 7, 20 needed groups, 17 with top administrators, 7, 19, 21-22 E Evaluation baseline assessment, 18, 62 checklist, 54 data analysis, 65 data collection, 61-65 goals, 53, 55 importance of, 8, 21, 53 literature, 55, 62, 68 measurement methods, 60-61 measures of effectiveness, 59 process, 56-59 questionnaire, sample, 63-64 summative, 56-59 F Foreign students as target audience, 44-45 Fraternities as target audience, 29-32 as peer facilitators, 51-52 gaining access to, 39 prevention efforts by, 30, 34 Funding importance of, 6-7 not much required, 6-7 sources, 20 G Greeks - See Fraternities, Sororities H Higher Education Center publications, viii services, 68 I Icebreakers, 45-46 L Legislation Drug-Free Schools and Campuses Act, 2-3 Part 86, 2-3 Student Right-to-Know Act, 2 Liability school 3-4 Literature acquaintance rape, 12, 14 alcohol, role of, 14 evaluation, 55, 62, 68 needs assessment, 18 peer facilitator training, 67 school policies on alcohol, 34 starting a prevention program, 23 workshop outlines, 44, 45 M Minority students as target audience, 45 N Needs Assessment, 1, 7-18 Norms changing them, 27 O Orientation target audience, 28-29 P Peer (student) facilitators athletes, 51-52 fraternity members, 51-52 importance of, 7, 28, 47 recruitment, 49-50 training, 50-51 training material, 67 Policies, school importance of, 5, 33 need for strictness, 5,33 need to enforce, 5, 33 Presidents commitment needed, 7, 19 role of, 1, 2-9, 20 Prevention definition, vii Programs alcohol, role of, 43-44 mandatory, 31, 32-33, 37 marketing, 20, 37-39 target audiences, 18, 29-31, 44-45 Punishment, 5 R Reinforcement of prevention messages, 36-37 Residence halls gaining access to, 38 target audience, 29 S Self-defense courses use of, 35 Sororities as audience, 29-32 as peer facilitators, 51-52 gaining access to, 39 Student facilitators - See Peer (student) facilitators V Videos lists of, 46, 68 pros and cons of using, 46-47 W Workshops alcohol, role of, 43-44 icebreakers, 45-46 materials, 44, 67 outlines, 44, 67 sex segregated, 48 skits, 47 small-group discussions, 47 topics, 41-43 Publications available from É The Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Please contact us (see back cover) for information on obtaining the following materials: ¥ Setting and Improving Policies for Reducing Alcohol and Other Drug Problems on Campus: A Guide for Administrators (62 pp.) ¥ Preventing Alcohol-Related Problems on Campus: Acquaintance Rape: A Guide for Program Coordinators (74 pp.) Methods for Assessing Student Use of Alcohol and Other Drugs (48 pp.) Substance-Free Residence Halls (62 pp.) Vandalism (8 pp.) ¥ College Alcohol Risk Assessment Guide: Environmental Approaches to Prevention (103 pp.) ¥ Raising More Voices than Mugs: Changing the College Alcohol Environment through Media Advocacy (74 pp.) ¥ Institutionalizing Your AOD Prevention Program (8 pp.) ¥ A Social Norms Approach to Preventing Binge Drinking at Colleges and Universities (32 pp.) ¥ Complying with the Drug-Free Schools and Campuses Regulations (34 CFR Part 86): A Guide for University and College Administrators (36 pp.) ¥ Rethinking the Campus Environment: A Guide for Substance Abuse Prevention (39 pp.) ¥ Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention: A Bulletin for Fraternity & Sorority Advisers (39 pp.) ¥ Binge Drinking on Campus: Results of a National Study (8 pp.) ¥ Secondary Effects of Binge Drinking on College Campuses (8 pp.) ¥ Special Event Planner's Guidebook (16 pp.) Fact Sheets/ Prevention Updates ¥ Alcohol and Other Drug Use and Sexual Assault ¥ College Academic Performance and Alcohol and Other Drug Use ¥ Alcohol and Other Drug Use Among College Athletes ¥ Alcohol, Other Drugs, and Interpersonal Violence ¥ Alcohol Use Among Fraternity and Sorority Members ¥ Getting Started on Campus: Tips for New AOD Coordinators ¥ Responsible Hospitality Service Prevention ¥ Social Marketing for Prevention The Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Our Mission: The mission of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention is to assist institutions of higher education in developing alcohol and other drug (AOD) prevention programs that will foster students' academic and social development and promote campus and community safety. How We Can Help The Center offers an integrated array of services to help people at colleges and universities adopt effective AOD prevention strategies: ¥ Training and professional development activities ¥ Resources, referrals, and consultations ¥ Publication and dissemination of prevention materials ¥ Support for the Network of Colleges and Universities Committed to the Elimination of Drug and Alcohol Abuse ¥ Assessment, evaluation, and analysis activities Read Our Newsletter Keep up to date with the Catalyst. Learn about important developments in AOD prevention in higher education. To receive free copies, ask to be put on our mailing list. Getting in Touch Additional information can be obtained by contacting: The Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Education Development Center, Inc. 55 Chapel Street Newton, MA 02158-1060 Website: http://www.edc.org/hec/ Phone: 800-676-1730 E-mail: HigherEdCtr@edc.org Funded by the U.S. Department of Education