Rutgers University Conference Explores Best Practices on Campus Sexual Assault Response and Prevention

Rutgers University recently hosted the New Jersey Conference on Sexual Violence. The conference brought together educators from all over the state to share effective approaches to campus sexual violence response and prevention, and to collaborate on future goals to strengthen higher education’s response to campus sexual violence in New Jersey.

Throughout the conference, scholars discussed various topics, such as how colleges and universities can partner with high schools to address these issues before college, providing and promoting needed services for campus survivors, and ensuring students’ rights are protected if they are accused of sexual violence.

According to Victoria Banyard, a professor in School of Social Work at Rutgers University, one of the prevention efforts that has seen success at Rutgers has been bystander intervention training.

“I also think we need to do much more to promote the role everyone plays in prevention,” said Professor Banyard. “The focus on bystanders is a step in the right direction, along with work being done on building resilience and well-being, but we haven’t gone far enough. We need to continue to look beyond individuals and changing what they do to changing policies and environments. We also need to reach back and start earlier, connecting efforts on campuses to prevention in middle and high schools in our communities. Prevention has to be done by large numbers of people – students, faculty, administrators – if we are really going to create a culture change.”

Professor Banyard is a magna cum laude graduate of Brown University, where she majored in psychology. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan.