Health program takes new focus
April 2, 2015
After all the poking and prodding, the interrogating and pain, a sexual-assault survivor needs all the support they can get from their friends, family and community.
EWU Health Wellness and Prevention Services has the conversation rolling with a local adaptation of the national Start by Believing campaign.
Start by Believing is part of End Violence Against Women International. The campaign’s focus is educating people about how to respond to sexual assault. Their website relates the ideas that the wrong reaction to a survivor confiding in their friends or family can propagate a harmful environment for healing and the continuance of sexual assaults in the community.
Health, Wellness and Prevention Services director Tricia Hughes said these kinds of conversations need to happen. The subject can be difficult to discuss, but that should not be an excuse not to talk about sexual assault, at all.
Since this particular program focuses on how to help a friend, Hughes said the community would be more receptive to talking about such sensitive issues.
Health, Wellness and Prevention Services provides presentations to any people or group entity on campus. Their two main goals for the presentation is to establish what anyone should say to a survivor and to provide resources that are not only available to students on campus but also out in the community.
According to Hughes, they have given presentations to 300 students and staff. About a third of which were faculty members.
EWU has a page set up on their website discussing what to do after a sexual assault but it only does this from the viewpoint of the victim.
Sexual assault education is not foreign to the Eastern campus. EWU’s annual police and fire report (mandated by the CLERY Act) states that “all undergraduate students are expected to participate in a program during [orientation] that addresses sexual communication and sexual assault awareness.”
While these courses are preventative training, the mission statement of Start By Believing states that education helps eliminate the shame felt by sexual assault survivors.
donald Iarussi • Apr 14, 2015 at 11:57 am
The problem of sexual assault is one since the beginning of time and there are many barriers to break. I am a former radio/TV producer director who wrote his 1990 thesis on whether the media is contributing or depleting acts of sexual assault in our nation. I was proud to have produced the first American Sign Language Public Service Announcements. (PSA’s) Today, I do not think there are too many people who are not aware of the existence of Rape Crisis hot lines and rape crisis centers.
We have still not broken the barriers of it being acceptable for PSA’s to be shown on the wide screen at college and pro sports events across the nation. There is definitely a lack of willingness by College and pro sports powers that be to let this happen. As an ex Pro/College sports Cameraman. I can also attest to the fact that there is still allot of sexist talk, anti gay talk that goes on in the headphones between camera people both male and female.
Rape should not be a political issue, Blame should not be a litmus test on whether or not you are a fan of that persons politics. Just as a terrorist bomb in a store seeks puts all races and religions at risk of death. Rape is not targeted at only one gender. one color, religions, etc.
The lack of anger against Bill Clinton and those who accused Clinton of rape clearly shows that there is a political bias in this nation. Feminists did not go after Bill Clinton or try to get to the bottom of the issue.Many on the left even mocked Paula Jones, Juanita Broderick, Kathleen Willey, Elizabeth Ward Gracen , Eileen Wellstone, , calling them trailer trash. (A racist statement in and of itself) Yet, the same white leftist naysayers went after Bill Cosby, A Black man with no regard to truth or evidence. The same lack of interest was in play after Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car into Chappaquiddick . While Ted Kennedy somehow escaped, The young Mary Jo Kopechnie was left to die in the automobile driven by Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy. The Democrat-Liberal Senator continued to win re-election in Massachusetts despite this honorific event.
If sexual assault is going to be a litmus test where liberal publications like Rolling Stone go after Fraternities and conservatives like Supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas. While ignoring infractions by the left. The problem will continue to get worse .