Men As Peacemakers CI Report – Interim

What has been most instrumental to your progress?

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.

Key lessons learned

MAP staff built significant momentum for institutional level change via the UMN President’s Initiative. This resulted from intensive relationship building, that led to an invitation to present a comprehensive plan for sexual violence prevention to the President’s Initiative student engagement committee. This presentation included prevention efforts in the critical campus environments of Greek Life, residential life, and athletics. It was very well received, but unfortunately, given the Dean-level administrators’ focus on limiting liability, as opposed to effective campus environmental change, key influencers at the UMN have not decided to move forward with the large scale prevention plan. MAP staff learned a critical lesson from this experience and continue to push forward prevention efforts by rethinking the way that cultural change occurs on a college campus.

As a result of the failure described in the previous response, we now recognize that transformational change (that which is sustainable and drastic) will come from a change in student culture, specifically from the students themselves. High-level administrator’s may publicly state their interest and commitment to addressing the root causes of sexual violence, (rape-myth acceptance, hypermasculinity, objectification), but they are not likely to enact policy changes and mandates that go beyond superficial change. As a result, MAP staff are now focusing even more on student engagement and training students in sexual violence prevention via a self-replicating student cohort model. We expect this approach to include effective, student-developed plans for engaging a diverse swath of the student body including Greek Life and athletes, in sexual violence prevention efforts.

Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving

As a result of the siloed nature of the UMN, resourcefulness was the most critical element in efforts to date. Specifically, MAP’s campus prevention coordinator used resourcefulness to mobilize Aurora Center’s existing staff resources to increase student engagement in sexual violence prevention efforts. The campus prevention coordinator also needed to be resourceful in his efforts with Greek Life, ensuring that key student influencers participated in listening sessions. These sessions yielded information that MAP staff are using to generate ideas for large scale student engagement that will result in changes in UMN party culture.

Other key elements of Community Innovation

Given the barriers that MAP staff currently face, we are exploring the idea of using disruption. Specifically this means trying to change the UMN system through non-traditional avenues. Specifically, we recognized we need to find creative ways of influencing campus culture, even if we do not have the full support and backing of key decision makers.

Understanding the problem

We have a much greater understanding of the dynamics of large campus institutions and the political climate that governs decision making processes. We are more aware of administrators focus on limiting institutional liability, which is not conducive to broad culture change. We also now understand that large campuses like the UMN have little to no existing student engagement efforts. MAP staff are now well positioned to create avenues for effective student engagement in sexual violence prevention, eventually resulting in reaching a critical mass of students leading to a transformational shift in student culture.

If you could do it all over again…

We would have reminded ourselves that despite good intentions and good will, campus administrators do not understand the nature of effective prevention of sexual violence. They believe it is a poster campaign, not in-depth work with Greek Life students to change party culture to reflect safety and gender equity. If we could go back to the beginning of the grant period, we would have hosted an experiential, multi-day training for the key stakeholders (Deans, other administrators, academic researchers, Aurora Center staff, Greek Life alumni and student leaders) that immersed them in the philosophy and purpose of primary prevention, so that they themselves were motivated to enact the large scale prevention efforts that MAP staff recommended.

One last thought

We are happy to make our responses public after the grant period has ended. Currently, due to the politically sensitive nature of our prevention efforts at UMN, we need to keep some of our responses that detail efforts to influence administrators confidential. Thanks for your support and understanding.