Tools to Support Campus Sexual Assault Prevention and Response

STACY LEE: Welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining us for the Tools to Support Campus Sexual Assault Prevention and Response webinar. It's my pleasure to introduce Christine Crossland, a Senior Social Science Analyst at the National Institute of Justice.

CHRISTINE CROSSLAND: Thank you, Stacy. And good afternoon, or morning, or evening, wherever you find yourself. We appreciate your attending today's webinar. As Stacy mentioned, I'm Tina Crossland, a Senior Social Science Analyst with NIJ's Office on Violence and Victimization Prevention. We're honored to have Dr. Nancy La Vigne, NIJ's Director, join us today, who is going to be providing some opening remarks. Nancy, thank you for taking time out of your very busy day for this discussion.

DR. NANCY LA VIGNE: Thank you so much, Tina. Hello, everyone, and welcome. And a special welcome to our presenters and experts for taking time out of their busy schedules to discuss this important issue. Thanks for all who joined. I'm really excited about this webinar. This is one of two webinars this week in recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which is in the month of April, as I think most of us know. At NIJ, we care deeply about sexual assault awareness and responses and services and supports to survivors, as well as information on ways to prevent sexual assault in all contexts. But April is a time that really helps us focus specifically on this issue, to listen to and honor survivors. And also to take stock of what we've learned and what can be done to help support people who've experienced sexual assault in all its forms – interpersonal violence, harassment, abuse, stalking – all in the interest of building safer communities. 

If you've heard me speak before, you probably know that one of my key priorities is what I call Evidence to Action. And what I mean by that is that it's all well and good to create research knowledge, but that knowledge is not very useful when we don't get it into the hands of the people who can really make use of it to improve safety and justice and equity for all. How do we do that? We need to have creative dissemination mechanisms. We need to engage more with the practitioners, the service providers, the policymakers, the people who need to hear about the research evidence and are best positioned to make changes on the ground as a result of that. That means we need more innovation in developing policies and protocols and trainings – all kinds of tools and interventions. And, of course, this topic today is strengthening campus responses to sexual assault. 

So I'm pleased to share, as I expect you know from the title of this webinar, that we'll be hearing from two groups of experts who have lived that Evidence to Action goal, or priority, that I have for NIJ in the field. The first presentation will highlight the first nationally representative study to investigate campuses' cooperative approaches to addressing sexual assault. What I love about this is that it resulted in a checklist. And what we know about implementation science and what gets evidence to result in changes on the ground is that checklists are one of the key strategies that seem to be effective. So we’ll hear more about the development of that evidence-informed checklist to help prepare campuses for effective prevention and trauma-informed responses to sexual assault. 

Then the second presentation will highlight another tool. It's an all-in-one tool for colleges and universities to use to ensure that they're complying with all the key statutes. I mean, Clery is probably the most obvious one, but also Title IX and, of course, Violence Against Women Act provisions. All of those create reporting compliance requirements for campuses, for colleges. And some of those can be daunting, and having a streamlined tool can be really useful. There's also an app that, as you'll hear about more, will provide prevention and response tools for these types of sexual assault, stalking, even post-violence incidents. I just love this webinar because it takes the evidence and it puts it into useful tools for the field. So I hope you'll find this information useful. We encourage your active participation today. 

Again, thank you to our presenters for sharing their knowledge today. I'm looking forward to learning more. I will be listening in for the entire webinar. And I also want to thank Tina Crossland, who has been shepherding so much of our sexual assault research investments over the years. She's such a wonderful expert in her own right and someone who cares deeply about these issues and is firmly committed not just to seeding good research but making sure that the research findings are lifted up and shared with the field. And, of course, I'd be remiss not to also acknowledge Stacy and Daryl for their mostly behind the scenes support of all of our webinars, this one included. So thank you. Now, I'll turn things back to Tina.

CHRISTINE CROSSLAND: Great. Thank you, Nancy. Very much appreciated. Before we proceed to today's presentation, I'm going to introduce our two primary presenters. Our first presenter is Dr. Elizabeth Mumford, a Senior Fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago, whose research is focused on resilience and the prevention of interpersonal conflict, abuse, and behavioral and mental health problems. Megan Carter is also behind the scenes, and we may hear from her later today. Our second primary presenter is Dr. Sharyn Potter, a Professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies, as well as the Co-founder and Executive Director of Research at the Prevention Innovations Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. Sharyn is a global leader in the social scientific development and evaluation of bystander intervention strategies. Joining her is Kim Hobbs, who we may also hear later today. And for now, the reason that we're all here, I'm going to turn things over to Elizabeth to get things going. So, Elizabeth.

DR. ELIZABETH A. MUMFORD: Thank you, Tina. And I also would like to thank you. We're going to talk a little bit about trauma-informed practices today. And Tina was very supportive throughout the pandemic as we endeavored to move this work forward during a difficult time. Not as difficult as people may have been having on campuses, but, Tina, thank you. You've been very supportive. Appreciate that. As Tina said, I'm Elizabeth Mumford, a Senior Fellow at NORC. We're an independent affiliate of the University of Chicago and we conduct research in seven main areas. But in terms of public health and my research portfolio, we design, support, and lead research across topics of interpersonal conflict, abuse, prevention, resilience, and responses to violence, both through independent research and the provision of technical assistance. And, Sharyn, if you'd like to introduce PIRC.

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: I'm Sharyn Potter, as Dr. Crossland said. And I just want to thank Dr. La Vigne and Dr. Crossland for hosting this webinar today. It's an honor to be here. And, also, I'm really excited to be here with Elizabeth Mumford. We've been able to collaborate in the past and I always learn so much from her. So just to give you a brief overview about the Prevention Innovations Research Center, I co-founded it in 2006 with my co-director, Jane Stapleton, and my colleagues, Vicki Banyard, Mary Moynihan, and the late, Mary Mayhew. In Prevention Innovations Research Center, researchers and practitioners are really pioneers in the development of bystander intervention strategies, and we have developed prevention and response strategies that are currently being used on college campuses, high schools, workplaces, and some branches of the US military. So thank you very much. And back to Elizabeth.

DR. ELIZABETH A. MUMFORD: Thank you, Sharyn. It's been great working with you all these years. Before we get started, we were hoping to get a sense of the diversity of the webinar participants today in terms of the roles that you fill to support Campus Sexual Assault Prevention and Response. This may be a challenge for some of you. Thank you, Stacy, for putting that up. But we know that many folks need to wear more than one hat, so you may have to choose your most prominent role. But we'll go ahead and give you a chance to.... Oh, there I've got it on the screen. I'm learning my skills here--applying my skills. If you can see the poll, and sort of take your most prominent hat and let us know. And, Stacy, I'm not seeing that. Oh, there it is. Great. As people are filling out this poll, I'm seeing a lot of others and it may be that you're researchers. It may be that you're technical assistance providers. There's lots of other roles of different responsibilities and purpose-driven efforts to prevent campus sexual assault and to respond--figure out how to respond. So we appreciate you checking in and letting us know who is here today. I think--or is it slowing down? Stacy, should we go to the next one or are we still here?

STACY LEE: Yes. We're showing poll results now.

DR. ELIZABETH A. MUMFORD: Oh, okay. Great. Thank you. Yeah, we got a lot of other responses. So on the next slide, what I'd like to check in with you about is not just your role but beyond your individual responsibilities. We're wondering about the program improvement activities that may be the priority for your campus at this time. So just think about what is top of mind at this moment, because, of course, in some ways, this question also could be challenging as you may be working many different angles and priorities to strengthen prevention and response. Definitely seeing a highlight on prevention best practice, incident response. Some people focus on principles of trauma-informed care right now. That's great. And I see building and maintaining teams. So this is really helpful input. Thank you for participating. I know everybody is super busy. Okay. Well, we're going to move on because your time is valuable. 

Here's what we're going to cover today. Everyone here is probably quite familiar with the estimated extent of the problem and the challenges, but it's worth taking a moment to highlight for anyone new to the picture and, frankly, to reinvigorate ourselves and our teams to make more progress in moving the needle to prevent sexual assault on campuses. We generally work with the estimate that one in four women in college have been sexually assaulted. Transgender, genderqueer, and gender nonconforming college students are sexually assaulted at a similar rate. And about one in 15 male college students also experience sexual violence. And this is all as far as we know. But one result is too many. These estimates indicate that the problem is pervasive and it's persistent, which is deeply unfortunate. Among survivors, very few are seen by victim services. An estimated one in five college-aged female survivors receive assistance from a victim services agency. That's a big concern to start with, but on top of that, male transgender and gender nonconforming students who survive sexual violence face additional social barriers to reporting and getting help, so we expect that this is an optimistic estimate of the proportion of survivors getting services. NIJ has been consistent as a strong supporter in making investments in research, including support for translational tools as Nancy was discussing, that can strengthen campus sexual assault prevention and response systems. 

So, today, I'm happy to present a research practice tool that came out of the Campus Sexual Assault Response study or CSAR. I don't want to mislead you and suggest that prevention is not central to the CSAR research and our purpose. We were investigating the big picture response to a pervasive problem rather than response to specific incidents of sexual violence. We want to take a moment to acknowledge the teams that worked on the CSAR study and specifically the checklist, including the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Agencies and our CSAR partners at the American College Health Association. 

The CSAR study was designed to collect both survey and interview data from campus administrators, health and wellness professionals, and the public safety teams. Here, we’re consistent with Sarah McMahon and colleagues’ vision of the Whole School Approach. We designed CSAR to capitalize on the value of gathering information from more than one sector. We examined the roles, training, and expectations in different campus departments and we considered the nature and consistency of collaboration between sectors, because it really does take the involvement of the broader school system to shift the culture. It’s also critical that we acknowledge the important opportunities for collaboration with local entities. That’s the cafes, the bars, victim service providers, healthcare, and local public safety and law enforcement working together to address the problem of sexual violence. And here’s where it’s worth noting that sexual violence in the college age group appears to be even more prevalent for women and genderqueer young adults who are not in college than it is for students. So institutions of higher education have a really important opportunity not only to protect students but also their non-student local peers by working together with local community organizations and businesses. 

Based on the CSAR study results, let's dive into our recommended checklist to create effective and collaborative teams. This is the bird's-eye view of the checklist, and we're going to look through each of these sections today. Although, we won't have time to dig into every item. In particular, in the checklist are some additional recommendations that are specific to different campus roles. That will have to be for your own reading after the webinar since it's too much to go through today, but we wanted you to know what is included. Okay. Let's start with the campus team. The most important first step to take, whether you're starting a program from scratch or you're looking to improve an existing program, is to build a strong team with a clear purpose. For response purposes, we heard from many of the sites in our study that having clear roles, centralization, and coordination improves the response time and satisfaction of those involved. We also heard, and this is important, that diversity is critical. It's essential to have a team comprised of individuals with diverse lived and professional experiences, skills, and perspectives. This is going to help your team develop better ideas and solutions for addressing challenges. And I bet, at least, one of you in the audience today is laughing, Riley, because the resources available to you at your institution may mean that you could be considered a one-person team. It's possible though that starting with a statement of goals may facilitate recruitment of others to help the mission. So that's our recommendation as a starting place. 

Then inventory who has relevant responsibilities, connections, and experience to build your team. Sharyn is going to talk to you about the uSafeUS app in the second half of this webinar and we'd like to draw your attention to how the CSAR checklist and the uSafeUS app can go hand in hand as the app has a find help section that may spur additional thinking about team members. On the CSAR checklist, we've listed a number of potential partners. You may find collaborators from a range of departments, agencies, and businesses, and you can use the checklist to help run through the options. As all experienced professionals know, champions can be found in different places for different endeavors, and that's why it's so valuable to spend this upfront time to identify different potential resources. There's probably a champion team member who can make all the difference who's out there just needing to hear from you. Just to pause here, don't worry that that map is really blurry. It got blurry when we stretched it out, which seems appropriate because there's not one particular campus we're trying to identify. Whether you work for a self-contained campus, a residential campus, integrated into an urban setting, or a commuter campus, the checklist can be adapted to your setting. But I'm a Marylander through and through, and that's the University of Maryland at College Park. So there we go.

The next recommended step is to conduct a needs assessment. Whether you have a highly skilled, well-resourced team or not, it's a good idea for continuous quality improvement to check in on available resources, processes, partners, and other assets to identify gaps or areas of unmet need. These other checklist items are big picture logistics. Almost everyone we interviewed identified communication as the key ingredient to building and maintaining a successful prevention and response program. Keep everyone on the same page by communicating your needs or updates immediately and making sure someone is always available to respond to the needs of both team members and students. Don't let meetings with team members become occasional or optional. Make sure you meet regularly and with purpose. You can also use this as a way to build trust and rapport among members of the team, as well as communicate about updates, ideas, or upcoming activities within and across departments. Additional key ingredients are to build out clear protocols that are written down and accessible. We'll talk about that more in a minute. And ensure that staff training is extended to the entire school system, including housekeeping, dining, special events, staff, as well as faculty. Of course, a lot of effort goes into training. At many institutions, much of these requirements are laid out specifically. The Whole School Approach to prevention response is likely to go more smoothly when the groundwork is laid for trauma-informed approaches and attention to implicit biases applied to teamwork protocols first and then the trainings for prevention and response. 

One of the main themes from our case study data was that students and faculty often don't trust campus safety, security, health and wellness, and other professionals to have their best interest in mind during an incident response. Your core team extends to include the students and student organizations for effective collaboration and communications. Critically, to build trust, this starts with prevention efforts. Once trust is broken, it's very difficult to repair and all it takes is one public incident or one rumor to circulate before entire groups of students decide to no longer trust or engage with campus professionals. To avoid this, campus health and safety professionals especially need to maintain a regular presence on campus. Put yourselves out there and make sure students know who you are, recognize your face or your uniform, or see you as an approachable presence. And this doesn't only have to be through prevention activities. You can host or co-host events or tabling at campus gatherings, handing out merch with the public safety phone number. Just being visible on campus is an important first step. Beyond events, that means collaborating on material development and sharing resources with a full and diverse range of groups on campus. One officer that we interviewed for our CSAR study said that their staff was very intentional about strolling around on campus in uniform, saying hi to students, asking how they were, what they're studying, what the latest TikTok trends are, anything to spark a friendly conversation. 

We also heard from several campuses that it’s critical for CSAR staff to share consistent messaging across multiple platforms. Consistency really is the key here. Students can’t hear from one office that health services are available 24/7 and then call a number that says the office is closed on weekends. Messages about what services are available, how to get in contact when offices are open and closed must be consistent across all platforms because the slightest inconvenience might be enough for a student not to seek help to stave off violence as much as to get assistance in the event of an assault. Remember that some people will look for information on websites. Others are best reached through social media. And don’t forget the traditionalists who may check out a student union bulletin board for hard copies or posters. The uSafeUS mobile app, that Sharyn will talk about, can be customized to integrate any resources you want to share across the community in addition to serving all of its many other purposes. Just like the needs assessment process, this is not a one-and-done action. These communication resources need to be reviewed and updated on a regular basis. 

Coming back to the off-campus partners that we highlighted as critical to the Whole School Approach, don’t limit yourself only to partnering with shelters and hospitals. Think broadly about the organizations near campus and in your larger community. Ask around on your campus who already has relationships with what organizations or businesses. An interesting thing we found at a couple sites was that some staff had no idea other departments or teams on their campus had relationships or agreements with partners in the area. If you can, get an assessment of who knows who and then start using existing connections or forming new ones to broaden the resources and information available in your area. In the process of inventorying potential partners and initiating conversations, it’s important to understand the goals and motivations of these different entities. Listening to their needs and understanding what they would hope to achieve will go a long way to proactively building sustainable partnerships. 

For some local partners, it’s going to be constructive to set up a Memo of Understanding. An MOU can detail communication protocols, highlight shared resources, and facilitate collaborative trainings. Working out these details in advance may smooth the working relationships over time, and it’s also super supportive given turnover of staff so people understand what the protocols are. A key consideration is to plan to share resources bi-directionally. Colleges and universities of considerable size especially can develop a reputation for swooping in to use community resources and then leaving nothing behind or they may make use of free resources in the community without giving anything in return. And I’m not shading anybody up. Your organization may not work that way at all, but it’s possible. So as you form partnerships with other organizations, make sure all parties involved are finding the relationships mutually beneficial. Explore opportunities for developing resources together or finding new resources through grants or other funding opportunities. 

Finally, on that point, I'm going to throw another motivation out there for investing in these partnerships. I'm certainly not responsible for awarding federal funds but it truly seems clear to me, from reading through the DOJ and the Department of Health and Human Services and other funder priorities, that grant assistants often recognizes the inherent strength of strong community systems. So it could be a win-win to lean into building these relationships and an integrated team system to prevent sexual violence. Jumping back to the CSAR survey findings for a moment, here's an illustration of what collaboration looks like as reported by our Health and Wellness and our Safety and Security professionals. In the picture, these data are very encouraging. There's a lot of collaboration going on. But as one of my brilliant CSAR colleagues noted, the headline here is referrals are easy, everything else is harder. Notably, sharing personnel and money seems particularly challenging given the low rates that we saw of shared staff and co-funding. There are likely a number of barriers contributing to this, which may be a direction your institution wants to take to investigate how you might improve in this area. In terms of sharing materials and joined activities like training and programming, we see there is a good amount going on. Based on our qualitative CSAR findings, we suspect a lot of shared training is joint with or run by Title IX, and that may be something to pursue further or it may be an opportunity to broaden out who's running these trainings. So, again, this is not part of the CSAR checklist, but you could explore what collaboration looks like at your institution, and we would be happy to share this CSAR survey instrument if that would help you. 

Understandably, response to incidents captures a great deal of campus attention and resources because of the urgency of supporting victims as well as legal requirements. The CSAR checklist can be a reminder to build personal rapport with your team members to improve collaboration. Earlier, we mentioned that communication was consistently listed as key to successful collaboration by the sites in our study. This slide includes some important checklist items for improving communication. Building personal rapport is often overlooked and should be considered one of the first and most important steps for building a strong prevention and response program. When we know our colleagues on a personal level, their likes and dislikes, how they communicate, where they went on vacation, or what their favorite dessert is, we start to strengthen our relationships and build trust with one another. Then when times are tough and we need a favor or they need to come to us for a favor, we are able to approach difficult conversations using familiar language and drawing on strong relationships that we've built over time. One of the most interesting case studies or examples we heard from our sites was from a university that was in the middle of improving their sexual assault program. They shared a story of their team members renting a campus van and going on a field trip to nearby universities to meet with prevention response staff there in order to study how other programs operate. On the bus to the other university, they took time to get to know one another, sharing stories about their lives, where they came from, their families, et cetera, and they used this opportunity to get to know one another and build rapport. It was a purposeful exercise that they all agreed paid out in the long run and helped them become more familiar with one another. 

Equally important, however, is to respect role boundaries. In our study, we met several teams that struggled with respecting the roles of others on their team when some team members were mandatory reporters and others were confidential resources. When someone is in investigation or gathering from a confidential resource and they are turned away due to privacy or confidentiality, it can be frustrating. It’s important that everyone in the program understands each other’s roles and responsibilities very clearly and that everyone respects those roles and the purposes behind everyone’s activities. We talked earlier about ensuring that clear and consistent communications are essential to this effort. That includes making campus policies publicly available in accordance with the Clery Act. While most institutions of higher education around the country fulfill this responsibility, it’s not at 100%, and many institutions that do comply may be delayed in posting this information publicly. Probably, once information is posted, there’ll be 10 other priority tasks that need your team’s attention, so it’s important to ensure that one person’s job responsibilities include reviewing policies, making updates, and communicating any changes clearly both to the team and the community. We had more than one respondent in our site visits who said that when resources are scarce, they typically heard about state or national policy changes through Twitter or professional association newsletters. While these are great resources for staying current, it’s important that teams in campuses appoint one person to be responsible for capturing these updates and sharing them with the team. Your staff shouldn’t all have to have a Twitter account just to know what new legislation or guidance is developing from the Department of Education. 

Regarding prevention initiatives and I know a lot of your said this is where your priority is. If you're not familiar yet, you probably can find lots of information about this out there. That's not the purpose of this checklist. You can look to CDC's Strategies to Prevent Campus Sexual Violence. You can look to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, and, of course, there are tools available from the American College Health Association. Remember, however, that these core components to prevention education should be included in training not just for students and faculty but staff across all campus' departments and, ideally, for staff from your off-campus partners as well. 

One of the most common procedural struggles we heard was how to handle off-campus incidents, especially for community or local colleges with limited to no on-campus housing. But this is also relevant for staff around winter and spring breaks or other holidays. So it's important to develop a clear protocol with local police for who will respond to incidents and how, who the primary contact and who a backup is for each site, who has jurisdiction, what type of information will be shared between units and how will it be shared. This is key for making sure that those involved in the incident don't need to repeat their stories over and over again. Additionally, you'll want to develop or update your plan for providing available resources to students during an incident response. The most important thing is that the required and optional steps for students to follow are presented very clearly. Students need to know what information they must share versus what information they can share when they're ready. They should know who on campus is a confidential resource and who is a mandatory reporter. All resources should be clearly presented so students can make an informed choice about what details they want to share and with whom. Again, make sure these resources and their messaging are consistent. For example, make sure the public safety's phone number isn't different on different brochures or websites. And here's a pro tip. This is a step we regularly take before implementing any research studies. If you're adapting these resources from another source or you're developing your own resources, consider pilot-testing them with some students to make sure they understand the material and it's clear to them. Like many aspects of your sexual assault prevention and response program, the incident response plan is much more detailed than this single slide would suggest. The whole point of the CSAR checklist is to take the enormity of the task and break it down into manageable steps. Again, this process is applicable whether you're building new protocols or whether you're reviewing and updating existing protocols. 

We recommend that you standardize the information collection process. Doing this well will facilitate the investigation process but also reduce the number of times students have to repeat their story. Developing a protocol for warm handoffs when supporting students, you can do that by physically walking a student to another team member's office or showing that there's a safe space they can meet with someone they trust. It also reduces the risk that the student gets too scared to follow up on next steps or seek additional resources and then drop out of the system. For all prevention and response tasks, it's critical that all team members understand the cultural diversity of your campus and be responsive to diverse needs during sexual assault prevention and response discussions. As we discussed earlier, one way you can do this is by being present and active on your campus and engaging regularly with students, show support by attending events, get to know their unique needs and interests. This will help them see you as a trusted resource for delivering prevention training and when incidents occur. This type of engagement will also help you understand what their priorities are when times are tough. Trauma-informed care principles are, at their core, about being kind to people who are having a hard time. And I don't mean to speak lightly about the experience of sexual assault. We could say people who are struggling with devastating violence. But I also can't presume to know what each individual has experienced, how their bodies are injured, and how their minds are reacting to it. Whether the campus staff are at the point of building constructive relationships or responding to incidence, we all have an opportunity and, usually, the inclination to bring kindness to others when it's needed. Erring on the side of kindness means preparing professional protocols that can be practiced and implemented according to plan, even when there's chaos or time pressure or other distractions. The CSAR checklist is a starting place. 

SAMHSA, CDC, and the American College Health Association toolkits provide more information. The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Agency also can provide training for your public safety teams. The resources are out there and it's on all of us to be prepared. That language recalls for some of us who've been around the White House Initiative, “It's on us.” Which it is, but maybe the slogan should have been, “There is a lot on us.” Taking care of the campus team and partners cannot be neglected. That includes checking in on workloads, mental health supports, and refining roles and responsibilities. We know from the CSAR study, and you likely know from your professional experience, that there's a great deal of turnover in institutional staffing for the prevention and response of sexual violence. Taking a look at salaries and benefits as well as professional growth opportunities could mitigate some of this turnover, and in the long run, both save institutional resources and ensure that the program that you're working to build actually achieves some of the original goals. 

Here's the last overarching point I want to share from the checklist. Resources are almost always tight but there may be opportunities to augment your standing budget. As a researcher, I look for grant funding, and many of the opportunities I see are for researcher practitioner partnerships. Other grant funding is available for program development and implementation. There may also be opportunities to leverage shared resources through your expanded team, inclusive of local partners. For example, inviting local partners to campus trainings expands the reach of the training program, where there could be businesses who would be open to investing in your efforts. 

I recognize that some of you listening in today may be double-tasking and that is quite all right. I do appreciate you working through this overview of the CSAR checklist with me. If your institution is stretched thin, your time, we hope that the CSAR checklist can give you a leg up in planning and preparing. If your institution already has processes in place, the CSAR checklist can be an opportunity to review your protocols, to assess if you want to tweak or make updates. Along those same lines, while we benefitted from the terrific input of our study partners and the study participants, we also want to hold ourselves to the same standard of updating our own resources, including this checklist. So if you see a clear gap, please reach out to me at NORC. You can download the checklist from our project webpage at norc.org/csar, and you can reach me through that webpage as well. 

Before I pass the mic over to Sharyn to talk about the uSafeUS app, here's a quick assessment of how your institution makes new students aware of your resources regarding campus sexual assault prevention and response. Thank you so much, Stacy, for putting that up. If you have an opportunity to check in with this poll, thank you very much. So I'm seeing a lot of in-person orientation presentations, and we know that's really critical to the first year students. A lot of sexual assault happens in autumn and for new students more often than the older students, but it's important to provide these trainings throughout the four-year experience so that we really bring everybody into the conversation at all times. Online training is a growing effort and training through residence halls is really helpful. Thank you. Okay. Well, turning to the next poll. This is the last one we'll do. We're curious whether your institution provides annual mandatory campus sexual assault prevention and response training for both faculty and staff. That's a really complex question. And we're curious, if your training is not mandatory or not required annually or not offered to all staff as well as faculty, please mark no, so we can get a sense of what's happening out there among the group of participants in this webinar today. So seeing it's about half and half. I'd like to pass this mic over to Sharyn to talk about the uSafeUS app.

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: Thank you so much, Elizabeth. So, I just need to say that when Elizabeth showed me the campus sexual assault prevention and response checklist, I was so excited to see that her and her team had compiled such an awesome mechanism to really compile this information that is kind of everywhere in different people's brains and different people's responsibility. And to just bring it all to one place. Then I said to her, the uSafeUS mobile app, which my team has been working on would be a great way to ensure that all of the students had this information 24/7. So, with that, I'm going to spend the next part of this webinar discussing the uSafeUS Campus Mobile Sexual Violence and Prevention and Response app. And then at the end of that, we can both answer questions. 

So, uSafeUS is a campus sexual assault prevention and response mobile app that lets colleges meet students where they are, which is as you all know, is on their phones. Since 2017, we've been developing, revising, and evaluating uSafeUS in collaboration with students, faculty and staff, campus administrators, including Title IX professionals, law enforcement, and victim advocates. The uSafeUS app also has an administrator dashboard that allows campus administrators to customize the app, so all of the information that you compiled in the checklist that Elizabeth just shared can be on students' phones 24/7. And uSafeUS is being administered in the majority of the New Hampshire colleges and universities with the grant from the New Hampshire Attorney General's office. We are in the process of launching uSafe nationally, but for the past few years we’ve been piloting at a number of large and small schools outside of New Hampshire, including the University of Florida, Clark University in Massachusetts and public universities in Colorado and Wisconsin. 

We've developed uSafeUS as an educational and compliance tool to reinforce the college prevention and response training and education that's required under Title IX, Clery, and the NCAA. We do not see uSafeUS as a standalone prevention strategy, but rather a prevention and response tool that is in students' hands 24/7 and is amplifying and supporting the existing college sexual violence prevention and response messaging. One of our team members is a former Title IX Administrator and she was one of the first adapters outside of New Hampshire of uSafeUS. She described the complicated conversations that she had with students in the aftermath of a sexual assault. And as they sat in this difficult appointment with her, she was kind of going through all of the options that they had, the reporting options, the non-reporting options, the wellness options. Somebody as we know who's just been informed through trauma, it's difficult to kind of put all this together. So, she basically said to them, “This is the information, but when you're back in your room and you're processing this and you're talking to your roommate and your friends, know that everything that I have talked to you is on the uSafeUS app.” So, I just thought that was a brilliant example of about how helpful it is and how it's with students all the time. 

As I said before, uSafeUS was developed by advocates, law enforcement, researchers, students, and campus administrators. And we're continually going back to these groups as we develop new features and enhance the current features. Last week, we had the opportunity to focus group with some first-year students and one of the students told us that uSafeUS has everything that a college student needs in one app, or to quote her, "It's like five apps in one app." The other thing that we've also worked really hard to do is address students' concerns about confidentiality. uSafeUS is confidential and individual data is not collected or stored. All we keep is aggregated institutional data, which I can talk about later. 

So, uSafeUS has two main features that I will take a few minutes to describe. We have prevention features, or what we call the Stay Safe features and Response features, or what we refer to as the Find Help features. When we were developing uSafeUS students consistently told us that they wanted to be able to leave an uncomfortable situation with a legitimate excuse. So, they wanted to get help in a way that didn't make a fuss. Working with students, all of everything you see in this app has been developed working with students. We developed three prevention features. I'm going to just take a minute to describe each of the three prevention features. The Expect Me feature is designed for students to make their travel plans temporarily, and temporarily is the key word here, known to up to three of their contacts to increase their safety while traveling. For instance, a student who's traveling from the library at 11:00 at night back to her residence hall or her apartment, can choose up to three contacts who can only see them for the designated time that they are walking back to their residence hall. So, in addition to the contact access, this feature also accesses the GPS data and the last known GPS location. The process of how Expect Me works is a user selects a trusted contact from their contact list, sets an expected arriving time and launches the timer. The trusted contact receives a text telling them the user is expected to complete the travel at the set time. And if the trusted contact has the uSafeUS app, and if the user has allowed or tap the button to allow it, the contact can also see the location of the user while traveling via the GPS during the travel time set by the user. Once the user arrives, the contact no longer has access to that user's GPS location. Their GPS location is temporarily stored in our data. For some reason, if the user does not arrive, their last location is held up behind a firewall for up to 120 hours for law enforcement purposes only. 

The next feature is Time to Leave. Students, again and again, tell us they want a legitimate reason to leave an awkward or uncomfortable situation. They never want to make a fuss. We constantly hear this. Time to Leave lets users send themselves a fake text or call for a reason to leave a situation. Students tell us they use Time to Leave when they're meeting someone they don't know for coffee that they've met on Tinder or Bumble, or one of the other dating apps. What the students tell us they do is they set Time to Leave so that they get a text from a roommate who is maybe locked out of their room and they set it to go off 20 minutes into the date. And if the user is having fun on the date, or in the coffee meeting and they feel safe, they ignore the text. But if the date, for whatever reason, the person they're meeting is making them feel uncomfortable, they have a legitimate excuse to leave the situation. The brilliant part is that their roommate never knows that they were used as the fall person in this situation. It's really important to reiterate that no contact information ever leaves the user's phone. Data is accessed via the app, but not sent to the backend servers. The real contacts are used to make the call/text look more realistic to someone who might be looking over the user's phone and not believing them. 

The last feature is Angel Drink for people over 21. And it's probably the most popular feature. Angel Drink looks like the legitimate drink recipes that apparently our students are showing to bartenders and servers, because we've heard this again from our focus groups and working with the students. But there are three types of Angel Drinks, without ice, with ice, and with lime. And these three drinks allow the users to quietly alert a bartender, server, or bouncer that the users need either help leaving, to let them know a person's harassing them, or the police needs to be called. Last week, my colleague Kim and I were in a focus group and one of the students said that she actually works as a server. She said she sometimes sees customers in situations that they look like they need help and she's going to use this drink menu as a discreet way to see if a customer needs help. 

Again, we're constantly working with the students to understand how they're using the app. We also have three Find Help features. These resources are fully customizable by the college or university through the administrator dashboard that I'm going to show you in a few minutes. This is really the place where all of the amazing resources you've compiled with the checklist can be put into the app into the student's hands 24/7. All of the content in the Find Help part of the app has been developed by a team that includes a Title IX professional, victim advocates, psychologists, law enforcement, and violence and prevention researchers. I'm just going to take a few minutes and walk you through the three Find Help resources. Find Help resources are really, again, a great way to make sure all of the checklist resources are in your students' hands 24/7 and find help resources are fully customizable in real time by the college administrator and include information for crisis centers, both on and off campus, campus safety and police, health services. For many of our campus partners, we include a direct link to the incident report form that many of the colleges are using. 

This summer, again, from ideas coming from our student meetings, we will be adding two new categories. The first category is community resources, and these are nearby support services for physical and family needs. Things like food resources and housing help for people who are in interpersonal violent relationships and violent relationships. Then the second category that we will be adding this summer is campus safe spaces. These will identify designated facilities promoting safety and inclusivity on campus, so things like gender inclusive bathrooms or changing rooms, and lactation rooms. All of these ideas are from our students. You'll notice on the bottom of the first screen on your left is additional resources. Under additional resources, we have six categories of vetted national resources. These six categories include national resources for general sexual violence response, transgender expansive resources, resources for male survivors, resources for Black, indigenous, and other people of color, LGBTQ+ resources, and resources for veterans. Shown we have an example of just some of the BIPOC resources available. Again, we are constantly at least once a semester going through and making sure all of the links work, the organizations are still in existence. Then as we hear about new resources and we vet them, we put them in the app as soon as we hear about them. 

The next Find Help feature is Helpful Answers. Currently under the Helpful Answers, we have answers for the four Title IX offenses, sexual assault, sexual harassment, relationship violence, and stalking. We were in a focus group a few weeks ago and students asked if we could put something with hate crimes. So we will be looking at that this summer. But what's really important is that the answers, again, have been written by this team I told you about, law enforcement, advocates, students, Title IX folks, researchers. Each of the answers are written from the three perspectives. A person who needs help in the aftermath of one of these four Title IX Offenses, a family or friend who wants more information to help their person, and then faculty and staff so that they can be in supportive roles, but also making sure they are in compliance with their institutions reporting requirements. All of the information both under Find Help and under Helpful Answers can be revised using the administrator dashboard that I'll show you in a minute. 

Finally, the last Find Help feature is What Next? And it's basically an interactive decision tree that someone who's been a victim of one of the four Title IX offenses or a friend or ally of someone who's been in one of these situations can kind of use this interactive decision tree to get information and be guided to resources and think about “Yes or no. I want to get medical help. I don't want to get medical help. I do want to report.” It walks you through. So these are the three Find Help features. And again, all of these features can be updated on the dashboard, which I'm going to show you in the next slide. 

Right now, it's very exciting. We are in the process of revising the uSafeUS dashboard. We're hoping by the end of the summer, the interface will be even easier. Right now, what the uSafeUS Administrator Dashboard does is it lets institutions see on an aggregated level how many people at their institution are using each of the different features. It is totally anonymous. We do not collect any individual data. So all uSafeUS does is track aggregated data by institution. For instance, you can see the number of downloads, the number of people who use Time to Leave, Find Help. Ss developers of uSafeUS when we look at the dashboards, we're really excited to see that students are using features like Time to Leave, Angel Drink, and Expect Me on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. We're not excited that they need it, but we're excited that they're using this as a resource if they need help. Also on the dashboard is where campus partners can download uSafeUS promotional materials, including flyers, push notifications, and some social media that I'll show you in a minute. 

At Prevention Innovations, we've published extensively about developing prevention strategies with the target audience and campus stakeholders. We're now starting to publish papers on how we've developed uSafeUS and how students are using the app. In one of our studies, we detailed the four-phase iterative development approach that we took to develop uSafeUS. In another study, we examined uSafeUS usage on seven community college campuses. And what we found from this study is participants told us they downloaded uSafeUS because they thought it could help keep them safe. They downloaded it because they wanted to help a friend. As will be no surprise to most of the folks in this audience, is females were much more likely to download the app than males. We also wrote a paper about how uSafeUS is a great way to use technology for primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. The primary prevention features are the Find Help features and Helpful Answers that are aimed to educate college students, and their supports about basic topics of sexual assault, relationship violence, sexual harassment, and stalking. The secondary prevention features are things like Time to Leave, Expect Me, Angel Drink features that help users remove themselves from potentially dangerous situations. And the tertiary prevention features are the Find Help and the What Next? research-informed guidance for survivors and their allies in the aftermath of sexual violence. We're more than happy to share any of these papers. Finally, in another study, one of our postdoctoral students looked at how a group of students used uSafeUS over a 60-day period using a journal, survey journal platform. And what our colleague found was the Stay Safe features were used most frequently showing that students really need and are looking for discreet ways to leave situations. 

Just a few additional items, we're really excited we have an R34 grant from the NIH and we are partnering with the University of Florida on our MASH Study to inform the integration of alcohol content, and alcohol misuse, harm reduction tools into the uSafe app. So we'll be prototyping another version of uSafeUS next spring. We're also in the process of adding suicide prevention information because we know there's a high relationship between suicide ideation and suicide and sexual violence. Presently, we have the national information and Find Help under both the crisis and counseling centers, and then in the national resources. And again, I just really want to iterate uSafeUS does not track any specific usage data. All the data is aggregated by the institution and anonymized. No individual records are kept by the institution. And again, we are continuing to add more features to uSafeUS to create safe communities and engage uSafeUS users. 

So how does this all look in real life? For the next few minutes, I'm just going to talk about how the information on the campus sexual assault resource checklist can be delivered to the students with the uSafeUS app. The integration of the campus Sexual Assault Response checklist and the uSafeUS Campus Safety and Response app, as Elizabeth said earlier, is really consistent with Sarah McMahon and her colleagues' vision of a whole school approach in promoting safe, respectable, and responsible communities. When our campus partners adopt uSafeUS, we ask them and work with them to share uSafeUS not only with the students, but with the parents of the students, guardians, faculty and staff, law enforcement, health and safety, and the local businesses that support the college community including, as Elizabeth said earlier, the coffee shops, the restaurants and bars, and the places where the students get their groceries. So, really embracing this whole school approach to protecting and creating safer communities. 

Our research shows that engagement with uSafeUS is much more successful when respected campus leaders like people like Title IX officers, presidents, resident assistants, faculty, ask students to download and use the app. At the beginning when we first started out promoting uSafeUS, we were using passive interventions like bulletin boards and posters to spread the word about uSafeUS. But in fact, in one of our studies in a residence hall, we examined uSafeUS engagement by using promotional bulletin boards. What we found is that students engage much more with the app if they had previous face-to-face interaction about the app. So what we've learned is that passive intervention strategies work brilliantly after there's that initial interactive engagement with the app. The information on both the checklist and the uSafeUS app requires campus administrators, like Elizabeth said earlier, to engage students, faculty, and staff regularly. This type of information can never be one and done. I'm not telling you all anything you don't know, it's not enough to give this information once. 

To implement uSafeUS, we've tried many different strategies. On the dashboard that I showed you, we have all sorts of training slides. We have swag for tabling and events, all different types of posters and flyers, even flyers for bars. We have social media, which I'll show you, instructor syllabi statements, and push notifications. And again, it's just going to this idea that it's really important to reiterate this message in so many different ways using many different mechanisms to convey this information. In addition to asking departments to hang uSafeUS flyers, we have found that syllabi statements are a great way to convey sexual assault response information and let students know this important information. The other thing is by having a syllabi statement in the syllabus, it's an alert to students that campus sexual assault is taken responsibly by the institution, and that faculty and staff really care about these issues, and that they're there, and they know how to help. 

We also have a uSafeUS ambassador program, a student ambassador program because what we've learned is the peers are the best ambassadors for all of the administrative messaging of uSafeUS. Again, this is on the uSafeUS dashboard, the ambassador guide. This guide has been created by students. It's just been recently updated. There's not only a way to train students, but a way to train ambassadors so they can train their peers successfully. A really cool feature of the uSafeUS is that the campus administrators are able to send push notifications to all of the uSafe users. They're just a great way to remind students that uSafeUS is on their phone and available for them to help themselves or a friend. We enlist students to help us write push notifications. And we have a directory that we share with our campus partners that's on the uSafeUS dashboard that's organized both by month and by topic. The best push notifications and the most engagement we ever had was from the most recent Super Bowl push notifications because of the most famous guest, right? Taylor Swift, she proved to be a great strategy to remind students to use uSafeUS, and that it was there on their phone. 

We also have some amazing students who work on our social media. So we post weekly on the uSafeUS Instagram but then we also twice a month share uSafeUS posts with our campus partners for them to put on their channels. And again, all of these posts are on the uSafeUS dashboard and colleges can use these whenever they want and this is just an example of one of our April posts in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. We're just really excited to be collaborating with Elizabeth and the amazing campus checklist and just to reiterate that uSafeUS was developed by students, victim advocates, Title IX professionals and other stakeholders.  It's a really great way to offer colleges a way to amplify their prevention and response strategies and make sure all of the information on the campus sexual assault and response checklist is in the hands of students. It's also an easy way for students to help themselves and also give friends, family, faculty, and staff and other community members a way to help with confidence. I just want to thank you for this opportunity for listening to us. We know how busy you are and I know that Elizabeth is going to jump on now and we were going to answer questions.

CHRISTINE CROSSLAND: Great. Thank you both very much. And yes, we are going to transition to questions and answers. We had a few that came in during the presentation. So I'll go over them really quickly in case people did not see the question or the response and to remind you of a few follow-up items as well. 

One of the first questions that came in was people were asking for a copy of the checklist. So we have provided a link to the Campus Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Improvement Checklist in the chat feature, and I'll upload that again in just a second. 

Jay asked, “I'm wondering about the ease of use and frequency of use. Do you have feedback in data on how often users use features like Expect Me?” Kim responded; Kim would like to provide that response now.

KIMBERLY HOBBS: I can do that. So the feature is very easy and very quick to configure. Once it is configured, that configuration is saved for the next use for the user's convenience. The used statistics in data really is varied across campuses. We find that it's really directly related to the student engagement efforts on the campus.

CHRISTINE CROSSLAND: Great. Thanks, Kim. We also had a question from Mandy about how you get your universities listed on the uSafeUS.

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: We are rolling out uSafeUS, and we license uSafeUS to colleges for one to three years, and we partner with them to customize and work through everything. So all they have to do is go to uSafeUS.org or look at it and just email me or they can just email me at [email protected]. And I can put that in the chat.

CHRISTINE CROSSLAND: Okay. Great. Priscilla asks, “Can off-campus resources that are national discuss inclusion in the application's resource section?”

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: Absolutely. Just email me again and we can get those in.

CHRISTINE CROSSLAND: Okay. We are getting several new questions. So, Stephanie writes, “I'm wondering if Dr. Mumford's research touched upon Title IX supportive measures or workplace safety accommodations.”

DR. ELIZABETH A. MUMFORD: We didn't research workplace safety accommodations although that's a really constructive topic for further investigation. We did look at Title IX supportive measures and have some of that data which we hope will be coming through in manuscripts available to share through practitioner publications soon. Again, we worked really closely with the International Association for Campus Law Enforcement agencies and ACHA, the American College Health Association, so we'll share that information. The survey was implemented during 2020 to 2021 and it was a super, super challenging time for a lot of people. So we ended up having to take our most critical Title IX questions and select only those and ask those from the health and wellness sector and from the public safety sector because the campus administrators, most of whom were Title IX offices really were struggling to keep up and participate because they had a lot going on. Thank you.

CHRISTINE CROSSLAND: Okay. I don't know if this particular question was completed typed, and I don't know if Dr. Elvis is still on. It says, “Do you have the same system Amber,” which I'm assuming is Amber Alert, “for this?” That's how it's phrased.

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: We don't have a connection on the app to the Amber Alert right now but if that's something that people want, we can totally look into that.

CHRISTINE CROSSLAND: Okay. And Jeff asks, “Have you considered integrating sextortion victim resources from DOJ's OJJDP's ICAC Task Force Program?”

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: That's a brilliant idea. And I would love to do that. We totally can do that. We're doing a big revision this summer.

CHRISTINE CROSSLAND: Great. Dr. La Vigne says, “Is there a fee for universities to obtain the uSafeUS app license? And if so, what is it? And how many colleges and universities already have a license and are using it?”

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: That's a great question. As I said at the beginning of the presentation, the New Hampshire Attorney General supports the administration of uSafeUS on the New Hampshire campuses and I think it's all but like one. We have slowly been piloting. So we are working with the UNH innovation folks and they are helping us license it because there's a licensing agreement. There's a baseline price and then it's based on student size. And we are in the middle of a national rollout.

DR. NANCY LA VIGNE: Can you ballpark it? I'm putting on my “I'm at a university in a Title IX office” hat on and I'm really excited about this app and I want to pitch it to my leadership, so they're going to want to know what's the cost.

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: That's a great question. We are figuring this out. We are in a launch state. So I will just say that right now the base fee per year is $7,000 and then like a nominal per student fee. I hope I don't get in trouble by my institution. So about $9,000 per year but if somebody signs a three-year contract, we would reduce that contract.

DR. NANCY LA VIGNE: So $9,000 a year for… I'm just thinking my son just graduated from University of Michigan. That's a really big campus. So, like, is it scaled by size or is it by a number of students, undergrad plus grad? 

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: Yeah. It's scaled by the number of undergrads. I know University of Michigan is huge, right? They have like 60,000 students. It wouldn't be like a per student price for that. Do you know what I'm saying? Kim Hobbs is on too. I can't imagine that being more than…

DR. NANCY LA VIGNE: So it's like $9,000 to?

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: $14,000, $15,000.

DR. NANCY LA VIGNE: Per year?

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: Yeah. 

DR. NANCY LA VIGNE: That's super helpful.

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: And it's not for just the students. We want everybody in the community, so we're just using the students as a barometer for the pricing.

DR. NANCY LA VIGNE: Sure, sure, that makes sense. So in terms of rollout, you're trying to roll it out right now.

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: We are. We just started launching about a week ago nationally.

DR. NANCY LA VIGNE: Okay.

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: The schools who have joined are pilots before, just found out about us through word of mouth and reading articles.

DR. NANCY LA VIGNE: How many pilots do you have?

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: We have all of the New Hampshire schools and so we have about 26, 27 schools currently using uSafeUS.

DR. NANCY LA VIGNE: Cool. All right. Thank you so much.

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: That's really exciting. Thank you so much.

CHRISTINE CROSSLAND: We have one last question. “Were the unique barriers when implementing the app at community colleges, if, in fact, it has been tested at community colleges? For example, a higher likelihood of financial barriers or engaging leadership, do you happen to have any community colleges in the pilot?”

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: We do. We have seven community colleges and our community colleges have been some of the most engaged institutions. I think with the community colleges, it's so many of the students have kind of these bifurcated or trifurcated lives, right? They're in school. They have a job. They often have families. And they're in a number of different vulnerable positions in the course of a day, so the students at the community colleges have been both great users and also have given us great feedback. Some of the resources that we'll be adding, including information on shelters and food assistance, comes from the diversity of the students that we have the benefit of working with.

CHRISTINE CROSSLAND: Okay. Perfect. Well, I think we've come to a point where we need to end the session, but I would like to make some final remarks. I think we all realize that there's been a lot of progress made addressing sexual assault on campuses, but there's still much to be done to end the violence and improve responses to it, support survivors, and make sure vital resources are available where they need to do the most good. And today we've learned about some important tools to help us achieve that aim. So please join me in thanking our incredible presenters and expressing appreciation for their valuable dedication and insight into the work that you do. It's so important. We're glad that NIJ was part of that to help support you in these efforts. It really does show evidence to action and how we can see that applied, and that's really so important. We also want to thank our attendees; I saw the numbers and it was pretty high today. We really appreciate you attending the event. You've heard us say it before. We know that your time is valuable. And so, we greatly appreciate the fact that you are able to take time out of your day to be here. I do want to remind everybody that there is going to be a webinar on Thursday. It's also one on-campus sexual assault. I'll upload that in just a second. I'm doing too many things. I'm getting older, and I can only do so many things at once, but I will get that up there for those who may be interested and haven't heard about it yet. But as Nancy mentioned before, besides the fabulous presenters and besides our attendees, I do want to say a special thank you to Daryl and Stacy. They do make these events possible. They make it very easy for us and our presenters, and we have so much appreciation for you all. And with all of that, I hope that everyone enjoys the rest of your day and I hope to see you on Thursday. Nancy, did you want to say anything?

DR. NANCY LA VIGNE: You said it all. I'm just here to smile and nod and show my support. It was a great webinar. Thanks to all.

CHRISTINE CROSSLAND: Great. Thank you. Take care, everybody.

DR. SHARYN J. POTTER: Thank you.

DR. NANCY LA VIGNE: Bye.