Each year, the orientation program welcomes incoming freshmen and transfer students to the Ole Miss family. Various issues are discussed to ensure the students’ happiness and safety, one of which is sexual assault on campus.
In May, Ole Miss police investigated an incident that reportedly occurred around 3 a.m. at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house. The accused member was suspended from the organization by the president of the fraternity.
Assault is a common topic for orientation gatherings at universities because such incidents are not only damaging to the dignity of the victim, but also to the reputation of the campus involved.
Sexual assault prevention has been a part of the orientation program for several years.
“Our approach shouldn’t vary just because one incident was public,” Lindsey Bartlett Mosvick, Violence Prevention project coordinator said.
Mosvick is a part of the Responsible Rebel segment of orientation.
“We have the same approach to orientation as we always do, because that’s the most effective way to prevent that violence,” Mosvick said.
“I think that students have begun to take the issue of sexual misconduct a lot more seriously,” John Aaron, a junior who served as an Orientation Leader from 2014-2015, said. “The presentation Responsible Rebel was interactive; it did a great job of making the topic interesting and informative.”
One method was the text message polling system, which enabled students to participate in the presentation live.
“When we introduced the concept of this issue, we asked folks to imagine someone they care about who might be affected by an issue like this, to try make it more personal,” Mosvick said.
The presentation balanced nationwide statistics and university policies with the resources that allowed students to share their honest opinion about different topics and kept them engaged. Both Oxford Police Department and UPD spoke at the program.
“It’s just orientation, so it’s not effective to hear the message one time,” Mosvick said. “We do a lot of work with first year students in particular and EDHE 105 classes, and throughout the year to reinforce these messages. That short time in orientation, they have a lot of information given to them in a very short amount of time.”
Sexual assault is an umbrella term used to describe a wide range of unwanted attentions, such as kissing, exhibitionism, groping and rape.
“The most effective way to prevent violence is to activate bystanders to do something when they see something that makes them uncomfortable,” Mosvick said.
