Men As Peacemakers

During the grant period to date, Men As Peacemakers (MAP) staff spent significant time engaging key stakeholders in various sectors of the University of MN Twin Cities (UMN) campus. MAP’s campus prevention coordinator laid the groundwork for large scale implementation of sexual violence prevention efforts by collaboratively developing a plan to embed MAP’s prevention efforts into the UMN President’s Initiative. These efforts included dialogue and strategic planning with the director of the UMN Aurora Center for Advocacy and Education. In addition, MAP staff engaged in dialogue with a collaborative of academic researchers tasked with evaluating promising sexual violence prevention strategies, various UMN administrators including Deans, and other members of the President’s Initiative.

This campus-wide relationship building and awareness raising is critical to future implementation of large scale prevention efforts. In order to create policies and mandates that result in fundamental changes in the way UMN administrators approach sexual violence, we need to continue to influence and spark change at the highest levels of the UMN administration.

MAP staff also spent significant time engaging Greek Life students in listening sessions and meetings to understand the cultural dynamics within UMN fraternities and sororities and to develop methods for embedding sexual violence prevention at the grassroots level within Greek Life. These listening sessions were eye opening and reinforced our understanding of the potential to make significant changes in campus student culture (leading to reductions in sexual violence), in particular party culture, via Greek Life engagement.