“It’s important to think of how we engage — especially students from diverse communities — who may be disconnected and disengaged from campus discussions about sexual violence," chairwoman of the SVA Council Amy Bonomi said. “We learned today that a one size fits all intervention approach on campus isn’t going to work for students of diverse communities.”

Finance junior Dachana Blaydes said the black community doesn’t generally talk about these sorts of issues, but said it is important for someone influential to spark a conversation.

Blaydes spoke about how the black community at MSU needs someone to reach out to them such as Vice President of Student Affairs and Services Denise Maybank, she said, in order to open the discussion amongst those students.

“We are sort of taught to keep quiet about these things,” Blaydes said. “We need someone to show us we can talk about this and we should.”

The issue of international students needing extra assistance was also brought up. Attendees brought up the differences in language and culture and another recommended having translators on campus.

The issue of having trauma-informed administrators was also an important topic of discussion.

“Trauma survivors can come with a range of types of dispositions and emotional reactions in response to the trauma.” Bonomi said. “That may seem counter intuitive when someone from the services side is interacting with them unless they’re coming from a trauma-informed place.”

Bonomi said all the services that MSU provides for sexual assault and relationship violence need to be trauma-informed so when students are coming forward with a particular experience, they are met with people who are sensitive to their trauma.

Numerous attendees brought up the issue of students not knowing what resources are available to them, which Bonomi said is something the SVA Council will be working to confront.

“I think part of our next step will be talking in specific details with those student groups, including those from diverse communities, on exactly how we should be getting that information out," Bonomi said. 

Bonomi said it is important to teach students about campus resources for sexual assault multiple times instead of just once at orientation. She also said having peers educate students can help because there is more trust involved.

MSU’s Title IX Coordinator Jessica Norris said Monday’s discussion yielded what is was aimed to, which was to gather input from the campus community about sexual assault and relationship violence.

“We got to hear from them first-hand what some of the issues are that they would like to see us address as we continue to enhance and build our Title IX program,” she said.

Norris said Monday’s discussion was the first of many of the semester.

The SVA Council will now be reviewing their notes from Monday’s discussion and forming recommendations to give to Norris who will create an action plan to implement changes in MSU’s Title IX program.