As part of its new Campus Climate and Culture Initiative, Dartmouth College has launched an online training program called “Bridges: Building a Supportive Community.” This new Title IX sexual violence prevention course is mandatory for all faculty, staff, and post-doctoral scholars. The new initiative comes on the heels of a recent lawsuit filed by seven women that claims that three male professors in the department of psychological and brain sciences “leered at, groped, sexted, intoxicated and even raped female students.” (See earlier WIAReport post.)
“This training will provide the campus with a common language and a common baseline for understanding these issues,” says Kristi Clemens, Dartmouth’s Title IX Coordinator and Clery Act compliance officer. “Then we can talk about the bigger culture and climate issues that might be happening on our campus.”
Bridges consists of interactive slides and short videos providing education on what constitutes sexual misconduct, from verbal sexual harassment to sexual violence. It includes information and interactive scenarios aims at ensuring that employees know how to identify and report incidents to college officials. The new program aligns with the online sexual violence training module, Sexual Assault for Undergraduates, which has been in place for all undergraduates since 2014. A new online training program for graduate and professional students is currently under development.
In addition to Bridges, the Campus Climate and Culture Initiative includes plans to review all academic departments, create a single policy to address sexual misconduct for faculty, staff, and students, create research advisory committees for all graduate programs, expand capacity in the Title IX office, increase mental health resources, and provide additional resources for the hiring of underrepresented faculty.