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Alisa Jimenez ’14 and Emily Sumner ’15 were both students at Rochester when they met in a therapy group for survivors of sexual assault. They came from different communities—Jimenez from Syracuse, and Sumner from the Boston suburb of Bedford—and they had different circles of friends. But when it came to sexual assault, Jimenez says, “We could understand each other in ways that I’ve never really been able to relate to anyone before.”

The two women became friends outside of the group. In the summer of 2013, Jimenez had just returned from study abroad in Belgium when she received an email from Sumner. “She wrote, ‘We have all this energy,’ ” Jimenez recalls. It was time to turn it into something of value.

“We’re both very proactive people,” says Sumner. “We wanted an outlet where we could bring our anger” about sexual assault “into something positive. And Alisa and I didn’t really see an outlet like that on campus.”

Sexual assault, which includes any nonconsensual sexual activity, has long been a problem on college campuses. Last fall, the Justice Department confirmed what advocates for victims—many of whom prefer to call themselves survivors—have long claimed: campus sexual assaults are vastly underreported.

When Jimenez and Sumner returned to Rochester, they scheduled a meeting with Morgan Levy, the University’s Title IX coordinator. Levy met with them and put them in touch with Melissa Kelley, a health educator at University Health Service.

“We didn’t know where to start,” says Jimenez, frankly. But in conversations with Kelley and Levy, their plans started to take shape. By the end of the semester, they’d launched the Survivor Empowerment Group, or SEGway.

As their name suggests, SEGway members serve as ambassadors, reaching out to students to make them aware of sources of help, and putting students who have been sexually assaulted in touch with sources of help on campus that they might not know about, or that they might be hesitant to approach. Kelley says SEGway’s contribution to students is invaluable.

“Just because I sit in this office doesn’t mean anyone knows I’m actually here,” she says. Nor, she adds, would a student who has been assaulted “just trust any random person who says ‘I can help you.’ ”

Kelley serves as an advocate for students who have been sexually assaulted. She’s “a confidential resource,” she says, stressing that she lays out the options for students and, if a student decides to make a formal report, whether on campus, to the police, or both, to offer assistance.

On her own initiative, Kelley has become the go-to resource for students who’ve been sexually assaulted. “This is not part of my job description,” says the health educator, whose primary work is to teach undergraduate courses and run workshops for students on topics such as drugs, alcohol, and sexual health. But, she says, “My personal and professional interests tend to be in sexual health and women’s health.” She began her career as a community educator at Planned Parenthood and as a volunteer rape crisis counselor. Shortly after she came to the University six years ago, she approached staff members in the Office of the Dean of Students, including Kyle Orton, director of the Center for Student Conflict Management. “We talked things over, and I said, ‘I think I can be helpful.’ ”

She has been, according to Orton, who works closely with both Kelley and Levy in his role as facilitator of sexual assault judicial proceedings on campus. But she’s been able to better support students since the advent of SEGway. Students started “just showing up” at her office. “I’ve had students stand in my doorway and say, ‘Hi, I heard you can help me,’ ” she says.

“It’s important that students and the administration help each other,” Sumner says. “A student is more likely to go to another student than to someone in administration to talk about an experience they’ve had. And they aren’t going to immediately call Public Safety. They’re going to want to go to their friend, or they’re going to want to stay in their room, and they’re going to want to hide.”

Both Jimenez and Sumner have now graduated. Jimenez, who majored in anthropology and international relations, works for a Midtown Manhattan law firm, in its office for global diversity and social responsibility. Sumner, who graduated this spring with a degree in brain and cognitive sciences, is headed to graduate school at the University of California, Irvine.

But since they founded SEGway, it has become a well-established group. Its membership of rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors have helped spread the word about the campus sexual assault policy. They’ve educated students about sexual consent through programs such as “Stop, Ask, Clarify,” which Kelley was preparing when she first met Jimenez and Sumner. In the next year, they plan to have the policy translated into multiple languages for the increasingly global student population. And they’ve held discussions on social and cultural factors that perpetuate sexual violence.

Orton calls SEGway’s form of collaborative activism “groundbreaking.” He works closely with male students, who are coming to realize that men have a key role to play in preventing sexual assault.

In the spring of 2014, Orton and professional colleagues in Residential Life, the University Counseling Center, Fraternity and Sorority Affairs, and the Department of Athletics and Recreation, held an open conversation for men about sexual assault. Years ago, a group of male students had formed an organization called Men Against Sexual Assault, or MASA. But as the members graduated, the group fizzled out.

Orton thought it was time for male students once again to play a greater role in prevention. After that conversation, Jacob Gusman ’16, David Markakis ’15, ’16 (T5), and Michael Silverstein ’15 approached Orton. Gusman and Silverstein are fraternity brothers in Sigma Phi Epsilon. “Jake and I talked about it a lot,” Silverstein says about sexism and sexual assault. “It frustrated us, because we were cognizant of it, and we saw plenty examples of it not being recognized.” Markakis, a mutual friend, was a leader in College Feminists. They told Orton they were ready to step forward to revive a role for male students.

Over the summer, the four men began to meet over Skype and FaceTime. In the fall, Gusman, Markakis, and Silverstein founded Men Opposing Violence Everywhere, or MOVE.

The group offers a space for men to discuss topics related to sexual assault and masculinity openly. They reach out to fraternities and sports teams, and sometimes, the groups come to them.

MOVE is a small group, with only five or six active members. It asks a lot of its members, who write discussion programs themselves. Gusman, a biomedical engineering major from Newton, Massachusetts, says the group addresses both sexual assault and the broader issue of cultural constructions of masculinity. Last spring, for example, MOVE held a panel discussion called “Man Up: What Does It Mean to Be a Man?” “It’s something people don’t talk about that much,” Gusman says regarding notions of manhood, adding that men lack a “healthy guide” on what it means to be a man.

Silverstein, who graduated in the spring with a degree in biomedical engineering, emphasizes that MOVE’s approach is not to preach, but to initiate dialogue.

“You can’t go into a situation being accusatory, like, ‘You guys are idiots. How are you not thinking of these things?’ It’s important to ask questions, like, ‘What makes you feel that way?’ ”

The atmosphere on campus is broadly supportive of SEGway and MOVE. The College Feminists have partnered with SEGway and MOVE on multiple initiatives. When the Students’ Association announced its participation in the national, White House– initiated “It’s On Us” campaign against campus sexual assault, President Antoinette Esce ’15 and Vice President David Stark ’16 said, “We are proud of the work our student organizations do to spread awareness and understanding about the issue of sexual assault.”

Orton says reports of sexual assault at Rochester have risen recently, following national trends. In 2011, there were two reported incidents of forcible sex offenses on all undergraduate campuses, including the Eastman School, according to statistics collected in accordance with the federal mandate known as the Clery Act. In 2012, that number rose to five, and in 2013, it was 10.

But he believes it’s not because the numbers of incidents themselves are rising. “It reflects people feeling more comfortable reporting and feeling confident that the University will look for the truth and support what the truth is,” he says.

Adjudicating sexual assaults on campus is not easy. Several prominent universities have stumbled, and in May, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights informed the University that it is investigating a student’s complaint about the handling of her sexual assault case. The office has opened investigations at more than 100 colleges and universities around the country.

Orton and Levy will be spending much time assisting the Office of Civil Rights in gathering information. In the meantime, Orton says, students have been critical in the fight against sexual assault, and have made progress that has benefitted the entire campus.

“We wouldn’t be as safe a campus as we are now without SEGway and MOVE.”

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For complete information on the University’s sexual misconduct policy and resources, see the website at Rochester.edu/sexualmisconduct.