March 01, 2023
Susquehanna University was awarded a $30,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Education to combat campus sexual assault and violence. The funding was part of more than $1.3 million awarded through It’s On Us PA, a statewide campaign to improve campus safety.
Susquehanna’s funding will support the university’s It’s On Us project, Speak About It to Stop It: Expanding Violence Prevention, in collaboration with partners Speak About It, Transitions of PA, Campus Speak.
“Annually, we commit to ensuring 100% of our entering first-year students are trained to recognize, stand up to and prevent sexual violence,” said Jessica Manno, assistant vice president for student life. “We will use a portion of this funding to reinvigorate those trainings by engaging theater monologues and skits based on real-life stories.”
Susquehanna’s funding will also support:
- New training opportunities for second-, third- and fourth-year students in specified campus organizations and groups to improve their awareness of how to create safe social spaces by addressing the intersection of alcohol and consent.
- A program focused on how technology and media affect consent and healthy relationships.
- A faculty and staff program to share concrete, specific strategies to engage students in topics of health and sexuality, boundary setting and mandated reporting.
- Development of new passive resource materials and new sensitivity and resource training for peer educators to better support the LGBTQIA+ student population.
- An anchor event during October’s Domestic Violence Awareness Week that will bring a speaker to campus to discuss what consent looks like when alcohol and substances are involved and safe and effective ways to intervene as a bystander.
- Continued partnership with Transitions of PA to co-create and implement an enhanced 20-hour intensive training for all student peer educators.
All of the above programming will be administered through Susquehanna’s Violence Intervention Prevention Center.