Aiming for more transparency and awareness, the Department of Public Safety is working to implement new regulations from the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) on campus.
According to Kevin Davis, the assistant director of the Department of Public Safety, the emphasis of the VAWA is crime reporting which includes three new categories: Dating violence, domestic violence and stalking. Through the crime reporting categories, the goal is to have a way to track all activities and keep a formal record. Because of the VAWA, there are now two courses available on Canvas about sexual violence prevention and bystander intervention.
“The other thing the law did is require training so that faculty, staff and students are made more aware of sexual violence in general and the policies and steps the university would go through to investigate,” Davis said. “I’ve created a PowerPoint training session and that will go to every student. Federal law has mandated that we provide this training to all students. I’ve done the same thing on the faculty staff side to make sure they know it’s a very important thing, (and) we really do want everyone to take it if at all possible.”
The Office of Student Life will keep track of who takes it and send out reminder emails to students who have not taken the course.
Senior Tasha Todd, a resident assistant in Shores Hall, went through training with public safety before school began.
“We talked about if we notice anything we can take our residents to counseling and to report things if we hear about anything,” Todd said. “I want my residents to feel comfortable to talk to me at any time.”
Craig Russell, the head of the Department of Public Safety, said that what the VAWA promotes is already very in line with what Harding aims to do.
“We feel like it very much fits in with our mission in the Harding community,” Russell said. “We certainly want all of campus to be safe and to feel safe … Bystander intervention training is really important because it encourages every part of the campus community to look out for each other. So if somebody sees or overhears or witnesses somebody saying or doing something that would make someone feel uncomfortable this is encouraging them to … intervene and say something.”
Russell emphasized that students can report anything that makes them “feel uncomfortable” to the point that they would need to talk to someone about it, such as a resident assistant or a residence life coordinator, to public safety.
Visit https://harding.instructure.com/enroll/FGKPAJ for the sexual violence prevention course and https://harding.instructure.com/enroll/7DLGTW for the bystander intervention course.
