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Clark College takes aim at sexual assault

$300,000 grant boosts efforts to get students to report incidents

By Katie Gillespie, Columbian Education Reporter
Published: February 19, 2019, 7:56pm
2 Photos
Clark College students Heather Leasure, from left, Ryan Oaks and Shalana Marshall talk with a group of their student peers about sexual harassment prevention and intervention during a College 101 class at Clark College on Tuesday morning. This student volunteer program was made possible by a grant from the Office on Violence Against Women.
Clark College students Heather Leasure, from left, Ryan Oaks and Shalana Marshall talk with a group of their student peers about sexual harassment prevention and intervention during a College 101 class at Clark College on Tuesday morning. This student volunteer program was made possible by a grant from the Office on Violence Against Women. (Alisha Jucevic/The Columbian) Photo Gallery

Clark College hopes a $300,000 grant will help the Vancouver campus target sexual assault and violence against its students — by increasing the number of incidents that are reported to college officials.

The community college in 2017 received a three-year grant from the Office on Violence Against Women, operated by the U.S. Department of Justice. It was one of 22 colleges, government agencies, organizations and tribes in Washington to receive grants aimed at reducing sexual assault and domestic violence.

And after months of behind-the-scenes work and small-group training sessions, volunteers are going out into the college community to speak to classes about what it means to consent to sex and what resources are available to victims of violence who attend Clark College.

The goal, project coordinator Tavish Bell said, is to facilitate community conversations about sexual assault and encourage victims to report assaults to college officials.

“I think just talking about it makes an impact and can change the culture, which is what we’re trying to do with this grant,” Bell said.

Shalana Marshall, 40, is finishing her associate’s degree in business management. She’s one of Bell’s volunteers, and on Tuesday, visited a classroom to talk to students about consent.

People can be afraid to speak out if they’ve been a victim of sexual violence, she said. Marshall hopes talking to students will help demystify the reporting process.

“One of the problems that any school faces, (is) the topics aren’t out there,” Marshall said. “And people don’t know they can talk about it.”

Though dozens of universities around the country receive OVW grants, funding for community colleges is more rare. Part of the challenge, Bell said, is fighting the perception that women attending community college aren’t assaulted or raped because there aren’t dorms or on-campus parties.

“People I talk to, they’re like, ‘Oh that doesn’t happen at community colleges because nobody lives there,’ ” Bell said. “Well, it’s happening to members in our community.”

Ironically, Bell said, if the grant works, reports of sexual assaults and rapes will increase — not because they’re happening more, Bell said, but because students feel safe to report assaults to campus security or the student conduct office, even if they’ve taken place off campus.

In years past, college security has reported zero sexual assaults, which Bell said “is not accurate at all.”

“It’s abysmal,” Bell said.

If reporting increases, Bell explained, the college can take steps to intervene, like moving the accused and victims out of shared classes, helping students access counseling services or provide students with escorts to classes or their cars. The main goal, she said, is to make sure students feel safe.

“If we want reporting to go up, we want people to feel like they can (report), that it will be taken seriously and that the college cares,” she said.

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Columbian Education Reporter