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Building a Harassment-Free Campus
Campus Action Project Teams

See highlights and photos from the 2006 National Conference for College Women Student Leaders Summit on Sexual Harassment.

Sexual harassment is a problem on college campuses nationwide, but many campus professionals and student leaders are confused about what constitutes sexual harassment and how it affects students’ educational experience. What do we mean by sexual harassment? How often does it occur, to whom, and at what cost? Where do we draw the line between freedom of expression and the right to a learning environment that is free from bias and harassment?

As part of the Building a Harassment-Free Campus initiative, AAUW’s Leadership and Training Institute invited students, faculty, and administrators from U.S. colleges and universities to submit a proposal for a Campus Action Project. The goals of this initiative are to create action on campus: to extend awareness of campus sexual harassment, implement exceptional projects that can begin to create an impact and affect change in the campus climate, and provide an avenue for ongoing leadership training and support of women leaders.

Campus Action Project Teams Selected
To give campus professionals and students the necessary tools to help improve campus environments, LTI has selected eleven projects at universities around the country. Many campuses expressed interest in working with AAUW; the campuses selected for the Campus Action Project program were chosen for the strength of their proposals, for their demonstrated efforts to proactively address campus sexual harassment, and for their commitment to doing even more to create the best possible learning environment for their students.

During Spring 2006, each CAP team will receive a grant of up to $5,000 and technical assistance from the national office to implement a campus-based program addressing sexual harassment in one of five areas of activity. These projects will help faculty, administrators, and students fully understand the scope of the problem, to raise awareness of the issue, and to design effective programs that reduce sexual harassment.

At the conclusion of the project, CAP teams will send a representative to present their outcomes at the June 2006 National Conference for College Women Student Leaders Summit on Sexual Harassment: Leading Change on Campus and Beyond.

1. Assessing Campus Policies and Procedures – assessing current campus policies, procedures, written materials, and resources to develop recommendations for campus administration.

• University of North Texas, Denton, TX
  UNT = Harassment Free
  The team from Texas will survey students to assess their knowledge of the policies, procedures, and resources for addressing sexual harassment on their campus. Their goal is to identify areas where information and resources are lacking to help inform University administration of the areas that need attention.

2. Campus Dialogue – fostering dialogue on campus through a forum, panel discussion, workshop, or other initiative.

• Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
  SHAPE up! Sexual Harassment Awareness Peer Education
  Indiana University will use peer education as a means of facilitating discussion about sexual harassment on their campus. A team of trained peer educators will offer workshops and host other events on campus. The ultimate goal of this project is to reduce sexual harassment through increased awareness, reporting, monitoring, and follow-up.

• Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY
  SBU Campus UNITED Against Harassment
  Throughout Women’s History Month, the Stony Brook team will sponsor a variety of events, including a town-hall meeting to focus on the issue of sexual harassment. From this dialogue the team hopes to identify what institutional changes are necessary to create a harassment-free campus.

• University of Akron, Akron, OH
  Make Our Campus Harassment-Free
  The team at the University of Akron will take the opportunity during Women’s History Month to facilitate campus dialogue around the issue of campus sexual harassment. Their goal is to empower students to recognize the problem, create solutions, and take action to prevent and confront sexual harassment.

3. Communications and Media – raising awareness through campus media or a publicity campaign.

• Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, MS
  Sexual Harassment…Speak Out
  The team from MUW takes an innovative approach with their project aimed at the “silent witnesses” of harassment– those who see it but do nothing. The team will use print and electronic media as well as performance to empower students to challenge behavior that creates a hostile environment on their campus.

• Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
  Changing the Campus Culture: A Multimedia Service Campaign to Stop Sexual Harassment
  Using multiple forms of media including public service announcements, t-shirt and print campaigns, the team from PSU aims to provide students and the wider campus community with information about attitudes and behaviors that will help to foster a harassment-free campus community.

4. Examining Student Experiences – implementing the survey instrument used for the national research on campus sexual harassment.

• Alfred University, Alfred, NY
  Sexual Harassment Campus Action Project
  The Alfred team will work out of the Women’s Leadership Center recently established on campus. The team will use the AAUW survey to gather data on student experiences to help inform university policies and programming decisions on campus.

• Chemeketa Community College, Salem, OR
  Identifying and Planning for a Harassment Free Environment at Chemeketa Community College
  Chemeketa Community College currently has a more diverse student body than at any other time in its history. As a result, the team is taking the opportunity to survey their students to help create policies and procedures that are relevant to the increasingly diverse student body.

• Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA
  Project STOP Student Team for Outreach & Prevention: An Anti-Harassment Coalition
  The team at LSU will administer a survey to assess their campus climate and gather information on student experiences with sexual harassment. They will share their findings with the entire campus to increase awareness of the issue of sexual harassment and provide campus administrators with information they need to design programs and offer services to combat harassment on campus.

• University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL
  UCF Assesses Sexual Harassment and Develops Interventions
  The UCF team will use the AAUW Campus Sexual Harassment Survey instrument with a sample of the 45,400+ students to establish baseline data on sexual harassment behaviors and attitudes. The final report will provide information to campus communities to raise awareness of sexual harassment and offer suggestions for interventions and solutions.

5. Web-based Tools – creating web-based tools for learning about or reporting campus sexual harassment.

• Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA
  Sexual Harassment Awareness: Tools and Resources
  The Georgia Southern team will develop a sexual harassment information clearinghouse website and a secure online reporting mechanism, as well as train a team of facilitators who will educate members of the campus community on how to use these web-based tools. The goal of this project is to increase awareness of sexual harassment among students and to facilitate the reporting of incidents of sexual harassment using web-based tools.

Questions? Call AAUW's Leadership and Training Institute at 202/728/3318 or send an e-mail to lti@aauw.org.