An important dialogue

Approximately 100 students, faculty and staff came to the Student Union’s Aquarium Lounge on October 27 to join in on the third Carolina Conversations session of the new academic year.

The topic: “Sexual Assault and Our Community: A Dialogue.”

“I know that for some of us this will be a particularly difficult conversation and we thank you for being here,” Chancellor Carol L. Folt said. “The courage everyone has to come to talk about this is something that actually matters a lot.”

Christi Hurt, the assistant vice chancellor in the Student Affairs Office who has been working in the field of sexual violence since she was a student at Carolina, began the conversation by presenting an overview of how widespread the problem of sexual violence is across the country. She then reviewed Carolina’s expanded efforts to combat it.

“I want to tell you that my commitment to this work is deep, it is profound and it is lifelong,” Hurt said. “I am very impressed with the turnout at this event. When I was here tromping around in the ’90s, it would have been impossible, I suspect, to get this many people in the union to talk about sexual violence. Seeing you all here today is really uplifting for me.”

Hurt said sexual violence is a public health problem across the country that affects some segments of the populations more than others. Prison inmates, children, people in the military and women between the ages of 18 and 24 are more vulnerable than the general public, she said.

Women 18 to 24 who are in college are three times more at risk of sexual violence than all women; at the same time, women 18 to 24 who are not in college are four times more at risk than all women.

People of color are at least 10 percent more likely to be attacked, while Native Americans are at the greatest risk of all, or twice as likely as all other races to be attacked.

Hurt reviewed some of the steps the campus has already taken in recent years to address the issue, including a new policy that went into effect in 2014 that is currently being evaluated by an advisory committee; new staff who have been hired with specialized training in Title IX; and the prevention task force comprised of students, faculty and staff that is now underway.

“I really want to be clear that sexual violence is a problem that all our communities need to grapple with,” Hurt said. “We are no different, but we can do better. We have miles to go before we sleep.”

Discussion groups were given a wide-ranging set of questions to explore:

• What do we need to do – broadly – to prevent sexual violence?
• How can we identify what to change in our community to help create a safe place for everyone?
• What is working in our prevention work? What do we need to change or add?
• What programs and resources (prevention and response) do we want to build in our community?
• What does an ideal response system look like?
• What do best practices include?

Participants answered these questions by writing on index cards and sticky notes, reading aloud to the larger group and discussing topics in small groups. By the end of the 90-minute program, each of the smaller discussion groups had a few minutes to present their concerns and suggestions to everyone in the room.

Recurring themes emerged, including the need to reach the people most in need of understanding the message – the people most likely to be perpetrators of sexual assault.

One student said his group looked at the need to “decentralize” the conversation by bringing outreach efforts closer to where people on campus live and work.

“It is knocking on the door of the Greek community, rather than attacking the Greek community, bringing the conversation in and breaking the walls down from the inside,” he said.

This marked the third Carolina Conversations event of the 2016-17 academic year. The first explored student comfort in the classroom. The second examined racial tension and social unrest following an afternoon performance ofDetroit ’67 by PlayMakers Repertory Company.

Folt and other campus leaders said learning how to talk about these subjects is a vital first step toward finding solutions.

“I think everyone has found these conversations to be helpful,’’ Folt said, “because the people who come to them come determined to make the conversations work.”