Michigan State University requires students to take relationship violence and sexual misconduct, or RVSM, trainings, as well as sexual assault and relationship violence, or SARV, prevention trainings. At the Associated Students of MSU, or ASMSU, general assembly meeting Thursday, representatives passed a bill recommending improvements, including requiring the training to be in-person.
“It just kind of made things clear that RVSM and SARV need to change,” Lyman Briggs College representative Kirthi Krishnan said.
The goal of the bill is to have ASMSU work with the university to create more inclusive in-person training for RVSM and SARV by requiring all of the diverse trainings to be mandatory and in-person.
“Right now they're not inclusive of many different groups on campus and many of them communities on campus, including the LGBTQ community, the disabled community, the international community," Krishnan said. "And while these are currently optional modules that you can have in your SARV training, there is no mention in RVSM of these modules, and it's optional.”
The bill's secondary, James Madison College representative Shaurya Pandya, said the trainings should be in-person to be more engaging.
An amendment was added to say excuses for in-person participation should be allowed, but the main goal is to have yearly in-person trainings for all MSU students.
“The online portion of it, though it's good for accessibility, it really takes away how vital it is to lessons that are in it," Representative Julia Diskin said. "I just really think that this is incredibly important.”
Vice President of Academic Affairs Aaron Iturralde said while high numbers of students are reporting RVSM violations, there's still room for improvement.
"I think this bill addresses some of those improvements, especially when it comes to the LGBTQIA community, disabled community and international community, which is something that has been prevalently shown in the Know More survey,” Iturralde said.
The bill was passed in a unanimous vote among the general assembly.
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