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Millersville University will share in a $1 million grant to 36 colleges and universities to combat sexual assault thanks to the “It’s On Us” initiative. State and national leaders of the initiative joined Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Pedro A. Rivera recently to announce the grants from Pennsylvania. Millersville’s portion of the grant is $29,995.
Millersville’s Title IX Coordinator, Elizabeth Swantek spoke at the event about the importance of the initiative, “These opportunities have strengthened our community’s capacity to create a safe environment for students, faculty and staff. The grant has provided us and many other institutions with the opportunity to enhance existing programming and training.”
“Every student, teacher, administrator and visitor to our campuses deserves a safe environment free from harassment,” said Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf. “This is the fourth year that my administration will be working with students, schools and communities to build programs to raise awareness about and stop sexual assaults. We must never tolerate this behavior on our campuses or a culture that allows it.”
Millersville programs that we have been able to participate in or create because of the grant include:
- Green Dot training program which is an active bystander training initiative
- Participate in a self-assessment through NASPA’s Culture of Respect Collective
- Host, in partnership with the YWCA, a K-12 summit on campus
- Continue to display and educate our community about dating violence through the Red Flag campaign
- The ability to launch and continue to fund our student led It’s On Us campaign
- Created Title IX Tuesday through peer education
- Fund a YWCA advocate on campus
- Offer high-quality training to key campus response staff, faculty and students
- Develop brochures and training materials for our campus around on and off campus resources, LGBTQIA resources, and faculty/staff guides
- Created a marketing strategy and materials around listen, support, and report
For this upcoming year, Millersville plans to:
- Create a large scale It’s On Us kick-off event for our community
- Hold trauma informed yoga sessions on campus
- Continue to offer enhanced training and materials, some groups we will be working with are: Veterans Resource Center, International Programs, and Student Access and Success
- Collaborate with other PASSHE schools
- Conduct a sexual misconduct climate assessment as well as focus groups to get a better understanding of reporting and support services
“The grant gives us the opportunity to continue to implement strategies and take the pledge that is it on all of us to listen, support and report concerns of sexual misconduct in order to create an environment in which sexual misconduct is unacceptable,” says Swantek.
