Susan B. Marine
And I believe and I’ll just say this, that I don’t think practitioners should be expected to do that on their own. I do think institutions should come together to support this work. I do think our professional associations should come together and support this work. I do think the federal government has a stake in in building out incentives for evidence based prevention strategy. There’s, it’s not we’re not saying listen, you know, Assistant Dean or assistant director of whatever office on campus, this is your fault. We’re saying, We’ve got to go back to the drawing board, we’ve got to work more collaboratively. And we’ve got to bring activists into the circle instead of what we heard over and over again, is how many times they were kept at arm’s length. They had door shut and their faces. They were told by staff look, I really empathize with you, but I can’t I can’t speak up in a meeting about this. I just can’t It’s too risky for me. Those are the things that we’re we’re suggesting collectivity is essential to address.

Keith Edwards
Yes. Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today I’m joined by Drs. Ana Martinez-Aleman and Susan Marine, the two authors of their new book voices of campus based sexual violence activist based on their research with more than 22 activists at 14 Different institutions. This book provides historical, legal and social context as well as the activist own voices, and the author’s analysis. Thank you both for being here and sharing this with us. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week. On Wednesdays find details about this episode or browser archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Today’s episode is sponsored by simplicity. A true partner Symplicity supports all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him his. I’m a speaker, author and coach helping leaders in organizations make transformations for leadership, learning and equity. can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. I’m recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. Thank you both for being here and for joining us. Let’s have you introduce yourselves. Susan, let’s start with you.

Susan B. Marine
Sure. Thanks so much, Keith. I’m delighted to be here. I’m Susan Marine. I am Professor and Vice Provost at Merrimack College, which is sited on the ancestral homelands of the Abenaki and Pennycook peoples in East Central Massachusetts. And I am delighted to be part of this conversation about this book that Ana and I had a vision of actually many years ago and finally brought to fruition together. So, thanks so much for having me.

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
Hello, everyone. As Keith some nicely introduced me, I’m Ana Martínez-Alemán and I go by she her pronouns. And I am currently in my office at Boston College. And for those of you who knows that general area of southern Massachusetts, the town of Brookline, chestnut, Hill, Newton, were all located on the tribal homelands of Massachusetts people. And the continuing presence of the Massachusetts people and the neighboring Wampanog Tribes are very certainly represented among many of the local town area residents. So it is a continuing lively and wonderful set of communities of indigenous peoples here in the eastern part of Massachusetts. I, as Susan has already noted, Susan, and I had been working together for a few years and a variety of different projects. We spunsome yarn on this for a little bit. And then finally, I think we both sort of got to the point where we were a little concerned over the previous presidencies, many suspect decisions about campus life in the presence of any kind of experience for students on campus being pretty much neglected by the federal government. And then also the fact that that particular administration was taking some very, very severe positions on campus life, especially around gender and women, etc. The Susan and I put our heads together and put on our big girl pants and we dove in. And that’s why we’re here today.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, awesome. Well, it was a, it was great to read, as I mentioned in the opening the voices of the activists for sure, and their perspectives and how they’re seeing things, but you also offered a lot of context, history, social context, and that. I know this has an interesting story related to timing, as you just alluded, sort of the two of you coming together, but tell us a little bit more about how this project came to be.

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
Yeah, I mean, as as, as I said, Susan and I are live very relatively close to each other. So that was very helpful there. We frequented coffee places often. And we had done some previous work and we had intersections around Gender in particular, and the lives of women on college campuses, both at the faculty, faculty, women as well as women students. And then more broadly to this idea of how campus culture does and doesn’t support a variety, a variety of constituencies on campus. So we’ve finally settled here, and it wasn’t a huge setup. I mean, it was a kind of an obvious thing, we both our heads were exploding during the Trump administration. And we finally just iron drafted out a project where, and I don’t want to speak for Susan, but I will a little, we were both clear that we wanted to do something that that brought to the fore, those students who are actually doing the work, as and not to say that the survivors and the literature on survivors isn’t important, and we shouldn’t keep studying it. But we really wanted to bring forth the voices of those students who are actually, you know, in it, and who are working to get the structures or their institutions changed, you know, they have smaller, more localized agenda, more national agenda, etc. And we just were really committed to bringing those voices to the fore, all all to really keep the spotlight on gendered violence on college campuses, and the role of institutions in that space, especially in light of the fact that at that time, it was especially true that the federal government had abandoned that cause writ large, quite frankly, I know Susan.

Susan B. Marine
Yeah, I think, yes, all those things are true the moment spoke to the need to recenter activists in this conversation. And I think what Ana said at the beginning about, you know, focusing on the people doing the work is really important, because colleges, you know, have taken up this issue on and off for decades. But it’s students and specifically student activists that have kind of kept the fires burning, who have held continue to hold our individual and collective feet to the fire around what colleges are doing or not doing. You know, I 20 years ago, I worked with a band of incredibly committed student activists, when I started in a contract position at Harvard, around sexual violence prevention and education. And I think about them all the time, I think about the energy and the commitment, and the fortitude that it took to take on an incredibly challenging and powerful institution around something that was live or die matter to them. And I think ever since then, I’ve been interested in compelled by, frankly, very humbled by the commitment of student activists, and what Ana and I saw happening around the child, the changes made by the Trump DeVos administration. It, it didn’t dissuade them. In fact, in many cases, it kicked up a new set of collectives and energies around addressing the problems. And that was, again, very inspiring, and we wanted to, we wanted to help amplify what they were doing.

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
You know, and another thing that keeps, you know, noted, that we certainly committed ourselves to, you know, we had the view in mind that, you know, activism and student activists and that energy had to be first and foremost what we were going to present. But we also wanted to keep in mind that it needed the context around well, what’s the history, what have institutions been doing? This is nothing new, we’ll get that. And again, it was focused on activism and activists. So what has been, you know, what’s that groundswell link to? Right? Like, what is its DNA, so to speak, so we really wanted to make a commitment to setting the foundation because these activists clearly, you know, despite the fact that we all think, oh, you know, every four years they’ll change over kind of thing, right undergraduates, especially, it was more that each institution had its history. Each institution has history around the topic. And the activists were very, very, very deep in that history. But we wanted to bring that as part of Have the conversation. When, after we talk to activists we start talking about well, okay, great. What are institutions going to do? Right? And we were committed, I think, at least Yeah, no, we were we committed to trying hard not to just do the usual implications, I guess it’s the best way of putting it. Susan and I are not known for pulling punches on the score. But so it was kind of easy. But right, you know, if institutions are complicit than let’s say that the complicit institutions are not complicit, let’s say that they’re not complicit. So that was a moment for us to say, what indeed needed to be said, given what activists had said about the structures of the university in light of you know, all that was going on within their institutions.

Keith Edwards
Good 22 Different activists from 14 Different institutions. How did you come to these folks? How did you find them?

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
Oh,

Keith Edwards
which was listening. lit up.

Susan B. Marine
It was a lot of document

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
It was a lot of work. But it was interesting. I mean, it was really good work, right? Because let’s say it, let’s start with the the most important thing that we decided very early on is that we would not take a look at activists on our own campuses, like those were off the table. And that opened up a lot of space, I think, to talk about institutional commitments, etc. And then we began to do what all good researchers do is we send out calls, we target key informants. We snowballed from some of the initial activists who had said yes, so all of that created this group, we were also committed to getting activists who are identified as women of color activists from different types of institutions in different regions of the United States. And, again, you know, this isn’t this isn’t about, you know, a quantitative assessment of activist practices. But we wanted to get the sounds of activism from the activists from different institutions in different places in the United States. But it took a lot of work. But you just kept going. And then, as we alluded to, before we came on the air. We didn’t we had not anticipated COVID. Not did anyone did, well, maybe someone somewhere did, but so we had all the intentions of figuring out how we were going to get to, to these interviews, and it was going to be a commitment, we were developing, you know, funding opportunities. And then we realized, Oh, we’re gonna have to, actually, what are we gonna do, right? Because we can’t go to these places. And then if there was a plus side to it, we wound up interviewing everyone on Zoom. Now, we had to wait a little bit, because students said, you know, overwhelmingly, all of our all of our participants, what, somewhere off their campuses, whether to apartments or home or wherever, so we had to let that settle. And then we interviewed them virtually, which I initially thought, you know, now, it seems like the dark ages, right? Like you thought, Oh, the virtual interview was not gonna go well. But actually, it was, it was great. It was, you know, yeah.

Susan B. Marine
Yeah. And we also, I think another factor that we sort of wondered is whether the activists would be active in the middle of the pandemic. And what we found was, they were just as committed. They were, of course, in many cases, not on their campuses, but they were doing work behind the scenes, they were building new campaigns, they were mobilizing each other, you know, during and after their return. And they didn’t seem to be losing their energy for the work at all. And that that it was even more inspiring, because again, we might have predicted that there’ll be a little hiatus while they kind of all went off and you know, experienced the doldrums of the pandemic but we didn’t see that at all.

Keith Edwards
So that’s a theme already right the rather than letting a pandemic let them go rest it energize them, rather than what the administration’s moves, discourage them and energize them. I’d love to hear some of the themes that were surprising to you, right? You talk with all of these folks from all these different places. I’d love to hear some themes that ran Horse what you already knew and understood in different ways. And some things that surprised you what kind of came out? Susan, let’s start with you. Um,

Susan B. Marine
I think a couple of things first that surprised to be. We were pleasantly surprised by the fact that several of the students who self identified as activists, were primarily peer educators. And thought of their activism as the kind of work they were doing, working to shift norms around their peers. Now, plenty of them were also marching, sitting in doing social media campaigns, et cetera. But it was, it was interesting and kind of heartening to us to see that the word activist, it didn’t scare anyone away. And in fact, it had a much more kind of supple and malleable meaning than we originally thought. And that was, that was both interesting, and I think, intriguing for us. We were impressed by the depth of the analysis of the students, they, many of them spoke from a position of having a really rich knowledge base of, you know, not just activist and social movement theory, but intersectional, social change theory and anti racism and, you know, woke, quote, unquote, woke politics that far exceeded what certainly either of us had during our college years. And they were incredibly committed to weaving, anti racism, anti ableism, you know, queer and trans inclusive ideas and methodologies and approaches into their activism that was really, that was beautiful to see. And, and they were very committed to that. And they did not set aside those principles in order for expeditious. pneus in other areas. And I guess one more surprise that I’ll just mention is that, you know, we predicted that a number of them would self identify as survivors, but many of them also were, were not survivors did not identify as such, but were deeply allied with survivors and recognized the need and the necessity of centering survivors in the work. And so they would, you know, step back as needed to prioritize the ideas and voices of peers who are survivors if they themselves were not. And, again, we found that moving and meaningful. So what else on?

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
Well, I just want to underscore a couple of things that you said, because I do think that, you know, and when I write you out on this one, Susan, Susan, Susan resisted thinking of gender violence education as activism. She was like, no, no, no, it’s not, not not. And I was like, wait a minute, you know, let’s take a look at this data. And in fact, she’s right in in how she describes it now, today that because part of the problem, it’s part of what was going on is that, you know, as higher ed researchers go, we, we tend to conceptualize student activism in particular ways. And oftentimes, they’re dated. And we don’t mean them to be dated, but we sort of have this construct in our head, right? And you can say the same thing about, you know, political engagement, etc. So I’m starting a new project in January, for example, around this whole very question of what does it mean to be civically engaged in an era of right? So, but that activism can’t be my grandmother’s, or my, you know, like, when I went to college in the dark ages, right? It can’t just be about? Yes. It is about a march or Yes, it is about Take Back the Night or whatever. And I think that the gender education piece sort of made it obvious to us that activism evolves on it sounds simple now, but it really isn’t. It really does take on generational characteristics, because then looping back to Susan’s comments about how how much they focused on this notion of gender violence is not being sort of encased in a traditional binary, right? And that it had to be thought of intersectionally and not just in its very rudimentary form of intersectionality. That places this type of activism, and now we’re thinking about activism as this Neo activism that isn’t siloed right? Activists don’t function in silos in the ways that certainly activism in the 70s did or even in the 30s, for that matter, but so those were, I think, to say they were surprising I will say that a little surprising, but they made all the sense in the world to us after the more that we listened and looked at what folks For saying, and I don’t know, I was, I felt good about that. Because it suggests that these generations of students who find their activism, they find activism in the ways that they want to engage with change, which is ultimately where we were sitting.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. I really appreciate that. Because I think, you know, when I think about activists, like I think I have some dated notions about that is about protest or social media campaigns, even citizens, signing petitions, things like that come to mind, and hearing about the peer educators, prevention, health promotions, things as other venues to create the change really makes a lot, or it was not what would initially come to mind. But once you hear it, right makes makes really good sense.

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
I mean, the funny, I’m sorry, the funny thing that it’s still it’s still fascinates me, but I, because I study students use of social media and things like that. So because I remember it wasn’t, I was very clear that like, I got money, that’s, you know, yeah. Activists are going to use social media pretty heavy handedly. And, and indeed, they kind of look at us all, they looked at me, like I had two heads, right, in the sense that I’m like, Well, yeah, whatever. But you know, no, we, you know, we group chat, we slack we, you know, so. So what tool is there, because these are generational things about just being in the world, right. But they didn’t switch over to sort of, for example, what we would what we saw with the Arab Spring, right, that social media really was the vehicle for that kind of activism. It’s in the background, it’s around, but it didn’t really constitute the central engine of their activist evolution at all.

Keith Edwards
I think that that’s really interesting, because I think, even though you were talking about these with these folks in 2020, I think it shows a real shift. I think, if you would have done this five years earlier, I think that would have been different. But social media is different, how people use it differently. Sounds like they were using social media and some of those tools to communicate with each other. But it wasn’t their primary vehicle of their message. And kind of That’s correct. Yeah, yeah. Susan, what other themes are really standing out to you that maybe reinforce some things or help you understand things?

Susan B. Marine
One of the things that we were really interested in understanding is sort of what drives the activists and what motivates them. And I mentioned already that the link between survival hood and or having people that they were close to who identified as survivors, that was certainly a heavy motivator. But I think for for others, it was also that idea that it’s, it’s their community, they see an injustice, and they’re going to address it. And we had a student who said, you know, I was involved in this stuff in high school, the minute I got onto my campus, I started getting involved in it. And that was an interesting take for us, because it it reminded us that first of all, students are far more interested in in sort of carrying over issues of concern to them from, you know, their earlier life into the present and now from the present into their later adult lives, but also the that they recognize their own responsibility to take on the work. And certainly, you know, the the rewards, the payoff was, I think, modest. For most of them. Most of them did not feel they accomplished victory in the goals they set out, which, of course, would be to eliminate sexual violence in all its forms on their campuses. But even modest goals, like having administrators respond to them or having a new policy put into place or seeing their institution allocate resources to hire more therapists, for example, some of those very modest goals weren’t met, and yet the students persisted. And so that was also really interesting to us, sort of what keeps them going. And one of our activists named Morgan said, you know, it’s kind of like having a runner’s high, you get going in the work, you collect yourself together with other activists, you do the work. And then you kind of feel that buzz of adrenaline and then it subsides because maybe you don’t quite get the goal or the outcome that you hope but then you get going again, as more evidence of injustice comes to light. And I think that was really again, it was inspiring. It was it was a nice carryover of the legacy. I think of the earliest rape crisis movements, you know, not even I’m not even talking about 1970s Read crisis move And so I’m talking about, as we discussed the beginning of the book, you know, all the way in, you know, post Civil War reconstruction and the RACI Taylor movement, you know, largely largely led by Rosa Parks, and the NAACP in the 40s. I mean, they really didn’t give up. And the student activists, I think, really do credit to those movements, because they’re, they kept going all the way. Even in the lack of any real victories. Also very inspiring. One

Keith Edwards
thing that you mentioned, reminded me that some of this wasn’t an antagonism, or adversarial with the institution. Some of this was a commitment to the maybe not the institution, but a commitment to this community to the campus that I Oh, yeah, so much more can be here. And I want to create something better for ya.

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
There, you know, they’re up there.

Susan B. Marine
There up there.

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
Yeah. And there’s students there, they are students whose, you know, generational sort of men enables them to see injustices, right. And they have a better language for them than previous generations. did. You know, so for example, students who came out of high school and already had that consciousness? Well, there’s more consciousness about that now, earlier. And earlier, we went at it sort of saying, Well, look, we’re at, you know, this whole metoo wave is, is peaking. Now. Now, we too, had been around for a while, but you have the high profile Hollywood cases, you know, and that’s a narrative, but it’s the narrative that they got around power, and sexual violence, and they could communicate that. And, you know, that’s, I think, part of also just the evolution of common Commodores normative knowledge. For many folks in certainly in the US around, Oh, right. This is the kind of stuff that happens. And it happens everywhere. It happens with kids, it happens in high school, it happens on team sports, etc, etc. So they come prepared, it is not new. But now they have an agenda around their peers and their peers also have that same. vernacular, I guess, too. And so it isn’t about. It’s interesting, I thought about this, when we were taking a look at the font, you know, when we coded, and everything that a few of them certainly talked about, they took courses, because I just figured, you know, people who take courses on gender studies, just sort of broadly understood, are going to be far more conversant. And some students did talk about that they had this particular class and this particular faculty member, but honestly, it didn’t. It wasn’t, it wasn’t really, really a dominant way of thinking about how they got to this consciousness at all. Which was interesting, right? I mean, it

Keith Edwards
was it. Was it peers and Ted Talks and social media?

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
I think, yeah, and all of that. And I just also do think that just in general, you know, it’s sort of the common culture, right? You know, what is it that? I don’t know, anybody watches TV. It’s especially since you know, law and order. SVU is on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So it’s, it’s in the open space in a way that when I was in college, it wasn’t right, and those notions of powerful people exercising power with regard to sex, and then also sexual violence, just but now, it’s everywhere, right? You can see it and people talk about it in a variety of different ways. And so therefore, I can understand it, gosh, if the Boy Scouts are doing in or if the Catholic Church is involved, you know, all of those things, and that’s a whole network of culture. I would also argue that, you know, many of our participants that are activists, or on campus cultures that were, you know, had very strong fraternity cultures. And if you didn’t get it coming in, you got it then right. It just became something that was very obvious to you so that when they fail There’s social. Their ability to be social on campus was restricted. And it was a real fear of violence. They could start to name it in those particular ways. But yeah,

Keith Edwards
because I’m hearing that they’re the folks you talk to you had a lot of context, a lot of knowledge from formal and informal places. But I also talked with a lot of college students who are oblivious to these issues and dynamics, right, but so they’re not, we’re not saying that college students now understand a lot more, but these folks really did. Right. If you want more about yes, you can. very succinctly, you don’t have to enroll necessarily in a course. Right. You can watch TED talks, you can just follow certain people. Yeah.

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
Yeah. Yeah. Although I don’t know. I mean, I would venture to say that. I mean, this is a good empirical question. And I don’t know the answer to it. But I’d make I’d take a guess that a large number, a substantial number of people on college campuses are prone to be the objects of sexual violence. Have some awareness. Right, they may not be as deeply sort of invested in a knowledge base about it. But they know it. I don’t think that you can walk on any college campus today and not get it because there’s always the emergency button. Right. And that has to be there for a reason. Well, what’s that reason? Oh, now maybe I don’t really think about it in as deeply complex a way that maybe some of the activists did. And I think that’s what sets them apart. Right. You know,

Susan B. Marine
they’ve, they’ve done the work to understand not just the issue itself, but the underpinnings of the issue, the cultures, the norms, the unspoken, you know, sort of hidden curriculum around why certain environments are riskier fraternities, Division One, sports, you know, cultures, et cetera, et cetera. They, I mean, their analysis, this was there. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t hyperbolic, and it wasn’t reactive. And it wasn’t well, I heard about this one thing that happened. And therefore I know that these students are the likely perpetrators, it was understanding that there’s a body of knowledge about this, and that they had access to it. And also, you know, carrying forward the influence of activist before them. So it wasn’t as if they had multigenerational networks or relationships, but they certainly had, like the seniors were talking to the first years. And so if nothing else, they had this intertwined way of sharing information with one another, of talking across experience of building their own knowledge by talking with one another. And, frankly, you know, strategizing together, and sometimes they look to other institutions to see what kind of strategy was going on elsewhere. And sometimes it was completely internal. But whatever the case, I mean, they were very deliberate about what they did it wasn’t it, they weren’t sitting around going well, we don’t really know what we need, but we’re mad about it. They had very clear goals, very clear agendas, very clear ideas about what the change work that needed to happen looked like and, and for them, the hardest part was they were often met with either resistance or indifference. Not really hostility, but definitely indifference and resistance from the people they were turning to for help. And largely that was other college administrators, Student Affairs, and and

Keith Edwards
I find that interesting that they really were connected to what the seniors had done and what had come before them. And I’m just curious now, if some of that has been lost, right in COVID years and pandemic and a little bit more isolation, a little bit more online classes. And I wonder if some of the questions for is maybe yeah, obstacle.

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
It’s a good bet. I mean, there’s some data just came out recently, sort of validating what we were we had all been thinking was that the classes that got hit with with COVID The hardest, didn’t sign up to join any clubs, right? Like there were so that student engagement in those kinds of co curricular things just just dropped. And then now it’s two Let’s back up again. So it would make all the sense in the world, that that’s the case. And you do wonder how it affected different types of institutions differently because everybody had their own. Everybody had their own set of moving goalposts during COVID When you came back when you wore masks, you know, all these things. But I think that’s a good bet. I would bet that that’s true.

Keith Edwards
Well, you too, have had so many of these conversations. And as I mentioned, you’re the context that you bring in the offer the readers is really, really helpful. You’re not just reporting what these students shared, although you do, you’re also offering, as you’ve done here, a lot of that context, I’m wondering what you would offer practitioners, I’m imagining folks listening are many activists themselves, feeling seen and heard, but also practitioners on campus who are maybe in campus leadership, or maybe investigating and adjudicating supporting survivors do prevention, education, and much more, what would you offer practitioners who would like to do better?

Susan B. Marine
Well, we definitely, I think, took a somewhat provocative stand in saying that we think we can and must do better. And specifically, that where we see the work sort of lagging or falling down, across almost every one of our participants narratives is that we saw quite a few instances where students were very aware that folks with whom they wanted to partner or collaborate, were disinterested in their input, their perspective and their experience. And so we sort of rekindled the call for a more collaborative and participatory approach to policymaking. We feel that strongly that our legacy, as you know, current and former and forever Student Affairs administrators is that, you know, we have a real, both ethic and moral imperative to partner with students on the change the changes that are needed on our campuses, that making policy and making decisions about how to handle campus sexual violence, without their input without their involvement and engagement is is a failing proposition at best. And we really did invoke that that call in our effort to say, look, we’re all in this moment of facing these very real pressures. Compliance, culture is a real thing. Doesn’t mean we have to acquiesce to it. neoliberalism has created structures that make us feel as if we have to operate within a very particular paradigm of of productivity and emphasis on on various forms of productivity. And human productivity is never assured or advanced in an environment where violence is present, period. So we sort of, you know, took on some of those those arguments, those invocations, because we believe strongly that our profession has the ability to engage in this way productively, that we’ve done it many times in the past, historically and otherwise, and that it’s really where our energy going forward needs to be placed, we cannot continue to put all of our eggs in the federal government basket of Title Nine enforcement, it’s simply not going to cause the end to sexual violence that we all envision. What else Ana, what else did we know?

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
No, I mean, I think that that’s a that’s a great summary. I mean, look, you know, the reality is that, right, so we have certain compliance, we have compliance, it’s shifted a little bit every new administration manages to do something or another. The reality is that institutions have to comply with something and there’s always and you know, every university counsel is very well aware of litigation, that’s possible, etc, etc. And a lot of it, you know, you sort of recognize that these are institutions. And that’s the nature of institutions. Having said that, I mean, I do find that well, or at least with with the activism and thinking about what all troubled them the most, at its core is about recognition, right, that they weren’t literally recognized. And what they meant by that is, like, look, we can give you ideas and, you know, here’s some low hanging fruit, right? This isn’t going to be we’re asking you to, you know, get some donor to give us $100 million to do X, Y and Z, but these low hanging fruit because ultimately one of the low hanging fruit for me, as somebody who thinks about this a lot is institutions invest a ton both time and money in assessing student engagement, and assessing, I think a very, very narrow view of the quality of the student experience. And in those measures are asking questions about this. Right? So I want to be able to be that administrators as Hey, the next time we get the Nessie survey, can we add questions about, you know, what is it like to be to be, you know, someone who identifies as a woman to go out on a Saturday night on this particular campus? I don’t know, that was a really bad item that I just, oh, my god, don’t let me be something in that direction. Right. And I, because the activists, you know, are very pragmatic, they get the big stuff, right. But they’re what they don’t get is like, there’s these small points where this would make a great difference in the experience on campus, which is ultimately what we want, you know, we want people, students, we want students to have high quality experiences. That says that the institution cares about your safety, your ability to take care of your studies, your ability to make friends with whomever. And that’s what they I think, brought to the table. They were very pragmatic here, the changes we can make see us include us, we can help you think about that thing. Like, you know, I can’t remember was it but you know, we can help you think about the, the van that is the safety ban that goes or, you know, like, are we gonna have you think about the, oh, I remember now, what institution closes it’s clinic at some absurd time, like at eight o’clock at night on a Friday night, and it’s not open on Saturday? Well, when do most of these, you know, violent acts happen? Like, alright, that does mean a bigger budget to staff, etc. But that, in their mind is very low hanging fruit if you want to address this issue. So yeah, I found them incredibly pragmatic around changes to administration administrative behavior.

Keith Edwards
Any any other things you would offer practitioners who are on imagining overwhelm doing their best? Yeah,

Susan B. Marine
I mean, that they’re doing as well as they could be. Yeah, we don’t want to help us out. We don’t want to sound like Why aren’t more people fighting this. But, in effect, what we’re saying is, first of all, it is going to require institutional courage to borrow Jennifer Fried’s concept, individual courage and institutional courage to take a hard look, again, at the ways that our cultures manifest and support and, you know, perpetuate the acceptance of violence along with violent acts themselves. It’s going to take collective energy and insight and knowledge and understanding of the problem. And that’s going to mean working together activists, side by side with faculty, with administrators, it’s going to take a re imagination of what is, you know, is needed. And because what we’ve done so far, has really made very little of a dent in the problem. And I believe and I’ll just say this, that I don’t think practitioners should be expected to do that on their own. I do think institutions should come together to support this work. I do think our professional associations should come together and support this work. I do think the federal government has a stake in in building out incentives for evidence based prevention strategy. There’s, it’s not we’re not saying listen, you know, Assistant Dean or assistant director of whatever office on campus, this is your fault. We’re saying, We’ve got to go back to the drawing board, we’ve got to work more collaboratively. And we’ve got to bring activists into the circle instead of what we heard over and over again, is how many times they were kept at arm’s length. They had door shut and their faces. They were told by staff look, I really empathize with you, but I can’t I can’t speak up in a meeting about this. I just can’t It’s too risky for me. Those are the things that we’re we’re suggesting collectivity is essential to address.

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
Yeah, you know, on Susan’s captured very well, I mean, for me, if I can editorialize all those points, it really was a case of sort of pernicious irony, right? Because this is a culture of compliance is a culture of fear of litigation, which is ordered by evidence, right? So institutions, according to our activists, were loath to actually ask them to help them gain evidence, right? They always like to look at evidence, if you know, someone who’s been accused, now then sues the back, right, then all of a sudden becomes a culture of evidence gathering. But for the the survivor who has been victimized by this whole thing. You don’t have a dominant narrative of evidence gathering that is viable, meaning that activist can actually help practitioners really think through how is it that one can gain that kind of evidence, and then have evidence sharing to then create a different culture? So, you know, it’s maybe maybe RNA isn’t it is not it is ironic, at the same at the same time, that is that’s duplicitous, etc, etc, but they are in the know, they know exactly what’s going on. And they can tell you, and they can provide you evidence. And there ignoring them. They’re just.

Keith Edwards
That’s my big takeaway, rather than meet these activists with indifference. See them, hear them, include them and engage them as assets that can help you do things better and choose different modules. Look at the safety then look at clinic hours.

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
Yeah, seeing them as resources is the big shift, right? That’s the paradigm that we would like, sort of flip that right now. There, they could serve the institution as a resource, because there is no institution on the planet who’s going to say that they are pro sexual violence. Right. So given that, you know, these are resources for us, and, and maybe 100% of the things aren’t going to be useful, but maybe 80% are going to be useful. Right.

Keith Edwards
Wonderful. Well, we are running out of time. It feels like we just got started. But this podcast is called Student Affairs NOW, we always like to end with the question, what are you thinking troubling or pondering now might be related to our conversation might be related to other things going on. And also, if you want to share where folks can connect with you go ahead and share that. Susan, let’s start with you.

Susan B. Marine
Sure, I would welcome the opportunity to connect with anyone who’s committed to the goal of ending sexual violence on campuses, it’s definitely the thing that gets me out of bed every day. And I think about all the time in every day and continue to feel a sense of urgency around. Please reach out to me, I’m at Merrimack college and my contact information will be listed on the episode. But please, please do reach out. I think the thing that I’m thinking about the most now is trying to better understand how the energy and the commitment that student activists, leverage on their campuses in college can and does translate to later life social change work. I was involved student activist, I think most of the people I know who do this work, were and are. And I’m interested in thinking about whether now we can be mobilized in some way that would be useful to activists instead of thinking of it as something that we had to leave behind, because we’re no longer, you know, working in these environments. So I’m interested in the long term, both commitment and solidarity of activist movements and how we can continue to build that and, frankly, sustain our younger, deeply committed colleagues who are caring a lot in their day to day lives, I think about that a lot.

Keith Edwards
was being the people and sustain the movements. Right.

Susan B. Marine
Exactly. Both. Both.

Keith Edwards
Ana, what are you pondering these days?

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
Yeah. I mean, I’ve been pondering because I ponder a lot about race and ethnicity, as it informs and doesn’t inform gendered behavior for a long time, and I do think that that’s still at the fore for me. I don’t think that I’m satisfied, certainly at that intersection of sexuality and On race sexuality and on a college campus, and how that differs, for example, historically black college and university where there are interesting phenomena around that. And then on predominately white camp, you know, all these differentiations, but at their core is how is it that the sexualization of race is all over campus? All right. So I’ve been thinking about that a lot. And then more to the point, you know, how is it that you don’t? Why? How? Yeah. How? How is that communicate? And why don’t we see that communication, I guess, is really more the point. Because you don’t hear much about it. And you really don’t. And that in and of itself is telling. So, I am at Boston College. And I think, you know, please feel free to reach out. Happy to engage in conversation with folks.

Keith Edwards
Wonderful. Well, thank you both. The new book is called Voices of Campus Sexual Violence activists, me too and beyond available now. It’s, as I’ve mentioned a few times, it’s great sharing these activist perspective, learnings, Wisdom Insights, but also a lot of history, social context and analysis that you both have continued to share today. So thanks for your great work highlighting these folks and also bringing your your scholarship to it. Yeah,

Susan B. Marine
thank you.

Ana M. Martínez-Alemán
Thanks to you. Yeah, thanks, Keith.

Keith Edwards
Thank you both. And thanks also to our sponsor of today’s episode Symplicity. Symplicity is the global leader in student services technology platforms with state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions, specific to their goals, but to partner to the institution simplicity supports all aspects of student life, including but not limited to Career Services and Development, Student Conduct and well being student success and accessibility services. To learn more, visit symplicity.com or connect with them on social media. Huge shout out to our producer Nat Ambrosey makes all of us look and sound good. To our audience. We love the support for these important conversations from our community. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to the podcast on YouTube and our weekly newsletter, which announces each new episode. On Wednesdays. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to our two fabulous guests today. Their great work and their new book and for sharing it with us and to everyone who’s watching listening. Make it a great week.

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