The St. Thomas Dean of Students Office created a new position to focus solely on addressing sexual misconduct prevention, education and training at the university.
A search committee of students and faculty are interviewing candidates for the Sexual Misconduct Prevention, Education and Training Coordinator position. Beyond raising awareness of sexual misconduct, developing existing programs and organizing campaigns, the new hire will provide direction and coordination among students, according to Rachel Harris, associate dean of students.
“Right now, many of the prevention, education and training efforts are kind of dispersed across different departments,” Harris said. “FemCom does some stuff; women’s studies does some stuff; the Women’s Center does some stuff. This will help (St. Thomas) coordinate and make sure everybody knows what everybody else is doing.”
Dean of Students Karen Lange said student-led initiatives is the key to fighting sexual misconduct and changing campus culture. The new position will encourage students to take charge, according to Lange.
“We created this position because we wanted to hire somebody that would be able to work directly with students in raising awareness around campus about sexual misconduct, stalking and relationship violence,” Lange said. “We’ve been doing some training right now, but we really want it to become a student initiative.”
Harris said she hopes the new employee will be able to identify strengths and gaps in St. Thomas’ sexual misconduct mission. Short-term goals for the new hire will be to get to know the environment and develop a strategy.
“In the first three months, it will be a lot of connecting with students, faculty and staff – learning about our green dot initiative,” Harris said. “My hope is at the end of three months, this person with their background and expertise and getting to know our culture can come up with a year-long action plan.”
Senior Anna Hangge, a search committee member, said she hopes to see the new position impact student awareness on how to get involved.
“I hope they can bring everybody together under this issue and take the awareness to another level,” Hangge said. “I think there are a lot of people who want to do things and don’t really know how to do it, so hopefully this position can really make that happen.”
The search committee is looking for specific qualities in candidates, according to Harris. Besides having relevant academic background and experience, the new hire must also be able to work closely with college students.
“A couple things are important,” Harris said. “One is to have some energy and passion about this topic that is infectious. People have a lot of ideas, and we need somebody who can execute those ideas in a really effective way.”
Junior Danny Kovack said he thinks this position could be especially beneficial to students who are looking for someone to talk to about their situation directly.
“If someone was sexually abused, they could go to this person for help and support,” Kovack said. “It would look good from an outsider’s perspective to show that St. Thomas really cares about their students and their lives outside of school. I think that’s pretty unique for a school to do that.”
Lange and Harris said prevention, education and training are important steps, but the long-term goal is to impact the culture around sexual misconduct.
“We want to have a culture of respect. We really want to have a culture that is free of sexual violence,” Lange said.
Harris said the cultural change intended will create an environment where students don’t have to worry about sexual misconduct while working through school.
“The bottom line is we want students to be able to come here, get an education and go out into the world – and harassment and sexual violence interrupts the ability to do that,” Harris said.
Simeon Lancaster can be reached at lanc4637@stthomas.edu.