The Dean of Students Office hired Emily Erickson as the university’s new Sexual Misconduct Prevention Coordinator, a position created earlier this year.
Erickson worked in the violence prevention field for 10 years before coming to St. Thomas. She has worked with several nonprofit organizations for teen health education and prevention and served as an advocate at Ramsey County’s Sexual Offense Services.
Erickson said she is excited about her new position.
“It was essentially my dream job in a lot of ways,” Erickson said.
The position is intended to provide leadership, coordination and training for campus sexual assault education and prevention efforts. Erickson will work with Student Affairs, the Luann Dummer Center for Women, Human Resources, the General Counsel’s Office, Public Safety, the Title IX Coordinator and other academic departments to develop and implement a comprehensive plan to address sexual misconduct prevention, education and training.
Erickson said Green Dot, a bystander training program at St. Thomas that teaches students how to respond to violent situations, is the answer to preventing violence.
“I had actually gone to the Green Dot bystander training that St. Thomas had about two years ago, and I was like, this is it,” she said.
Junior Matthew Lao said he’s glad Erickson’s new position will spread awareness of the sexual misconduct policy and help prevent sexual assault.
“There is never an explanation for (sexual assault) because it simply is wrong in all cases,” Lao said. “Consent is everything, but you can’t consent under the influence. It’s taking advantage of people, and I think everyone needs to be aware of it.”
A large part of Erickson’s job will be working with students, and she said some have already reached out to her.
“I really hope to connect with students, come to group meetings (and) go to classes if that’s a good fit,” Erickson said. “Connecting with other people who care about violence prevention or making our campus safer, that’s really exciting to me.”
Sophomore Ellen Goding said the new position is a good idea, and she thinks Erickson’s work with students and student leaders will be beneficial.
“I’m really glad (St. Thomas is) doing this, especially the bystander training, because you don’t always know how to approach a situation or what to do,” Goding said. “I think it’ll be really good for awareness.”
Erickson said her biggest challenge right now is being new to the St. Thomas community.
“I need to get to know the community more and understand the culture,” she said. “I think some of the things that work well at St. Thomas is that it’s a relatively small community. I already get the sense that there is a strong sense of community here, and I think that particularly will bode well for a program like Green Dot.”
Senior Morgan Schreurs, a co-leader of St. Thomas’ Feminist Community, said FemCom is looking forward to having Erickson as another ally in administration for sexual misconduct education and prevention.
“Quite frankly, we needed such a devoted staff person as a campus community, and we are so happy the administration took the step of creating this position and hiring Emily,” Schreurs said. “We look forward to working closely with her in coming weeks and months to help create positive change on the St. Thomas campus.”
Erickson said she is passionate about violence prevention and wants to help students, faculty and staff feel empowered to get involved in the issue.
“I don’t necessarily want to be the leader at the forefront of this movement,” Erickson said. “I want to be a person that can help facilitate folks’ individual passions and interests and motivations to make change on our campus.”
Jamie Bernard can be reached at bern2479@stthomas.edu.
Thanks for reporting on this Jamie! Myself and the rest of FemCom always look forward to reading your stories!
Why are we hiring someone fulltime to teach something that should be obvious? The reason university tuition is so high nowadays is because of administration staff growing exponentially. Why do we need a diversity officer, “social media coordinator” and a “sexual misconduct prevention coordinator”? They’re positions that are either useless or better filled by a student – not a full time employee making our tuition balloon even higher.
Paul, St. Thomas is hiring someone full time to teach about sexual misconduct because it is NOT obvious. A vast majority of students on campus aren’t even aware we have a sexual misconduct policy, let alone that it was totally re-done and improved this past year. The position of Sexual Misconduct Prevention Coordinator is incredibly crucial to this community and deserves the dedication of someone who isn’t a student/bound by academic obligations. It is a full time occupation. Sexual misconduct is an issue on every college campus, and by creating this position, St. Thomas is preventing scores of students from potentially becoming victims of such crimes. If having this critical job (and others similar to it at St. Thomas) means paying more, I could think of no better way to spend my money.