Even if Southeast Missouri State University is one of the safest campuses in the state of Missouri, issues of date rape, assaults and stalking still exist and students need to know how to prevent it.
Victor Wilburn is an associate professor of child development in the Department of Human Environmental Studies and also the director of the VICTORY program at Southeast Missouri State University.
“Part of this education is about helping students to understand that while this is a safe environment, sometimes not so safe things happen and we do need to have a plan of action,” Wilburn told KRCU.
The VICTORY program is based upon a federal grant given by the U.S. Department of Justice and deals with date rape, sexual assault and violent acts of crime committed to women on college campuses.
One of the ways SEMO fights those issues is through this program, which tries to focus on the education of new students as studies have shown that most incidents happen during the first 6 months of college of the victim. According to Wilburn, it is a time when new students’ guards are lower and therefore they are more vulnerable.
“One of the key tip is the importance of being vigilant. The importance of being aware of your surroundings and also the importance of having a plan. It’s important that someone knows where you are going when you are going out, and different things of this nature, and it’s also helpful when more than one person knows,” explained Wilburn.
Cases of abuse, assault or stalking happen most of the time with someone that the victim actually knows; this is called acquaintance rape. Students need to know how to protect themselves and to be aware of the importance of informing law enforcement when an incident do happen.
The VICTORY program not only educates students but also offers training to law enforcement partners on and off campus, judicial branches on campus, and the rest of the local community, as incidents do not only happen on campus. The programs organizes workshops to educate groups such as resident assistants, fraternities and sororities, athletic groups and international students. It appears that there is a high level of abuse in those subgroups.
“Sometimes cultural differences in how man and woman or in how people treat each other in one culture may be appropriate but in this culture these things falls into categories of abuse. And so therefore education is the main tool of this program to help offset and minimize our outcome of abuse,” Wilburn added.
At Southeast, there is no requirement for students to be trained or informed about issues of abuse that could occur on college campuses. However, the VICTORY program tries to reach everyone and UI 100 courses, which are required by the university, also touch the subject. Through the “Don’t cancel that class” program, VICTORY also reach more people: when faculty is out they can contact them and they will come and talk about their program.
Other partners on campus such as the Office of Student Conduct or the Department of Public Safety also work around informing students on how to prevent assaults and what to do when it happens.
“It’s a challenging issue, it’s a dark issue but the problem of the issue is, because it’s a challenging issue and it’s a dark issue therefore people either don’t want to talk about it or don’t want to think about it. And we believe that it’s important to educate people about it because it is our awareness of it that increases the chance that we can be safe,” said Wilburn.
According to researches, 1 in 25 victims report incident and in most cases they are women and they end up dropping charges. Of course men can also be victims, as sexual violence happen to both genders, but the numbers are lower.
In average, 20 to 25 people are witnesses of an incident and do nothing to help the victim. Wilburn explains it is because people in our society are conditioned to mind their own business, but it is the responsibility of witnesses to do something, despite their legitimate fear of getting involved and possibly put themselves at risk. The best thing to do is to find a way to do something on your level of comfort.
Wilburn said it is also important to help the victims after the incident and to make sure they do not stay in a state of being broken but instead find a way to help heal and built themselves back up.