Prayer flags hang during the Finding Our Voice: Sister Survivors Speak Exhibition Opening Ceremony at the MSU Museum on April 16, 2019.
MSU’s Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct Workgroup will host a series of four listening sessions to discuss the progress of the university's RVSM strategic plan, starting next week.
April is sexual assault awareness month, and this April marks one year since MSU first released the plan.
Multiple sessions will be held in an attempt to maximize participation.
Sessions are scheduled for Tuesday, April 12 at 7 p.m., Thursday, April 14 at noon, Monday, April 25 at noon and Wednesday, April 27 at 7 p.m.
All sessions are open to anyone in the MSU community and will be held virtually via Zoom. Those who are interested can register online for any of the sessions.
Rebecca Campbell, psychology professor and an adviser to President Samuel L. Stanley Jr. on relationship violence and sexual misconduct, said the goal of the listening sessions are to give people an update on where the university is at with the RVSM strategic plan.
“It was released in COVID, during the spring of 2021, and we didn't have an opportunity for as much campus engagement as we would have liked,” Campbell said. “It's an opportunity for people to give feedback, so that as the plan goes forward, we can add to it; we can revise it. It doesn't have to be a static document, we can get feedback, and ideas about other things we should be focusing on.”
Campbell said issues of relationship violence and sexual misconduct are really salient for so many students, faculty and staff at MSU, and the sessions will give participants an update on where the university is at with many of those issues.
“We've gone through a major institutional crisis and major institutional trauma, and we're still healing, we're still growing and we're still changing as an institution,” Campbell said. “I think a lot of people want to know, ‘what are we doing for services for survivors? What are we doing about prevention? What are we doing in terms of training faculty, staff and students? … It's an opportunity for them to share their voice and their opinions about things that we need to focus more on, or some areas that we haven't considered yet that need more work.”
Since the plan was released last year, the RVSM workgroup has launched efforts including the Know More campus survey, the Support More campaign, updates to the sanction and discipline policy for tenured faculty and the opening of the sexual assault healthcare program.
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