Seven people from Ohio University attended the first "Generation IX: Our Time. Our Power. Our Voices. Changing Campus Culture Student Summit," sponsored by the Ohio Department of Higher Education on Thursday in Columbus.
The summit allowed all universities in Ohio to send student representatives and an adviser to an interactive, student-centered conference at the influence of Title IX and universities' role in addressing sexual violence on campus.
“I really enjoyed it,” Claire Seid, a senior studying sociology, said. “I think it was really informative and exciting to be in a room with so many advocates for changing campus culture.”
She went to three sessions covering understanding the history and impact of student-led movements, navigating roles of advocating and partnering with community-based advocacy organizations to support students.
“I gained a deeper understanding of how to involve many players in activism and left refreshed,” Seid, a member of F--kRapeCulture, said. “I hope to be able to re-energize and rejuvenate other activists on campus with greater understanding of intersexuality.”
Each campus was able to send up to five student representatives, so OU conducted an application process to select the students. Twelve students applied, and the Department of Higher Education allowed OU to take two more students, Mathew Hall, assistant director of Health Promotion, said. Only six of the seven OU students were able to attend the Summit, though, because one was sick, Hall said.
“We tried to be very intentional about basically different organizations that were being represented,” Hall said. “We tried to be very intentional so that the message could be spread across a wide variety of students. After OU’s representatives came back, they could take everything they learned and, within their work, hit a large number of people.”
Hall was the adviser for OU, and he attended three sessions: "LGBTQI Community and Gender-based Violence," "Title IX and Law Enforcement" and "Finding the Balance Between your Professional Role and Supporting Student Activism."
After going to the summit, Nicole Rhoads is trying to get a Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment chapter on OU’s campus.
PAVE is a nonprofit that works to break the silence and prevent sexual violence through survivor advocacy, education and survivor support, according to their website.
“I’m hoping that PAVE would be the central way to get everybody involved,” Rhoads, a junior studying journalism, said. “To make it one big movement instead of little branches and trying to find where to go.”
The sessions she went to discussed social media activism, survivor advocacy and starting a movement on campus.
“I learned that is so incredibly easy to start a movement on campus,” Rhoads said.
To go to the summit, she filled out a questionnaire and wrote an essay.
She said there were about 60 schools from across the state at the event.
During the summit there was a campus planning opportunity in which representatives from each campus came up with three action items to address.
The representatives from OU want to improve exposure to violence prevention messaging for upperclassmen, put on a workshop or campaign about how to respond when a friend discloses they are a survivor of sexual assault and create either a campaign or workshop about sex positivity.
“We know from research nationally that statistically students are more likely to first disclose that they’ve been assaulted to their friends,” Hall said. “And we know that how that friend responds to that disclosure determines how or if they receive resources or help.”
