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    spotofluffNatasha Vargas-Cooper
    3/13/15 6:33pm
    1. Survivors of sexual assault could attend workshops on trauma and healing.

    This seems kinda fucked up, no? I mean the workshops could be great and conducive to healing and all, but maybe you're someone who doesn't want to relive that experience...what happens then? You have to complete one of these things?

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      HermioneStrangerspotofluff
      3/13/15 7:11pm

      Then you complete one of the other options, same as all the non-survivors. No one is making survivors go to this thing, it's just there if they want it.

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      spotofluffHermioneStranger
      3/13/15 7:14pm

      Right, and one of the other options is still likely going to bring up their past trauma, is it not?

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    winethanksbyeNatasha Vargas-Cooper
    3/13/15 6:23pm

    Yea... about the grad students not needing to attend. As a former grad student, I'm calling BULLSHIT buckoooooo. Sometimes I think the higher you climb the academic ranks the more fucked up your perceptions of power dynamics becomes.

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      hashtagsandhashishwinethanksbye
      3/13/15 6:37pm

      This. And fucking professors should have to watch this shit.

      I watched female colleague after female colleague complain about how weird male professors were to their female graduate students. Challenging them more in seminar, suggesting less-challeging projects, seeing if they might be more comfortable working with someone who "does gender"…etc. The list was un-ending.

      However trying the process, I can include some of the most bad-ass PhD feminists as my really, really good friends. They don't take shit from anyone (not that they did before, they just weren't in a position where challenging this bullshit did anything but alienate you within the mostly male faculty)

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      IAmJoaquinwinethanksbye
      3/14/15 12:36am

      Right?!? As an almost-done grad student, it boggles my mind how clueless some profs are (though I'd say, in the humanities at least, fucked up perceptions of power dynamics have less to do with rank and more to do with self-absorption & can thus occur at all levels & ranks) when it comes to their own attitudes and behaviors. Like: excuse me sir, but can you tell me how your work can be all about challenging neoliberal racism, which you're really good at, and yet you sit here defending a misogynistic campus climate, all the while entirely missing your hypocrisy? Can you tell me about that please? Thanks.

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    John BoehnerNatasha Vargas-Cooper
    3/13/15 6:19pm

    To the undergrads complaining: THATS THE FUCKING POINT. It's your school! Complain when they don't take rape seriously the same way you complain about having to fulfill this requirement!

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      ShibaNOJohn Boehner
      3/13/15 7:23pm

      Seriously. I have never been raped, and consider myself to be pretty progressive and mature when it comes to my treatment of the topic of sexual violence. If I was asked to do this, I'd still do it! It's not the end of the world. Really.

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    Just SayingNatasha Vargas-Cooper
    3/13/15 6:21pm

    I think this program, with better movies, should become a requirement for Universities receiving Federal Aid.

    Also,

    >Graduate school has been an exercise in ego annihilation.

    He is doing it right. You go to grad school to change the world, and then learn about the slow creeping scientific frontier. And peer review :-)

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      needanewnameNatasha Vargas-Cooper
      3/13/15 6:39pm

      I'm hoping you forwarded this to the people who administer the program. If they're going to do this, let's hope they take an interest in making the program decent. Let's hope.

      ETA: Decided I had no idea whose purview this would fall under - so I went to the program's website - and I still have no clue who is actually administering this program and might actually read the feedback. Maybe just start sending it to the people/offices listed as on-campus resources in the policy book? Probably best to have it come from the website rather than a former student whose name they can locate (ahem, me), but I do think you should send this along so they can know folks are talking about it and what they're saying. If there's one thing Columbia might reliably care about with regard to this stuff, it's public opinion. Sigh.
      Here's the contact info for the Title IX coordinators for Columbia University, for Barnard College, and for Teachers College; they were the only ones with email addresses listed in the resources section of the policy book (page 23).

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        areyouserious221Natasha Vargas-Cooper
        3/13/15 6:18pm

        Please, tell me more about how white men are the root of all evil.

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          Notlongforthisworldareyouserious221
          3/13/15 6:20pm

          Literally nobody said or implied that, honey :) go back to where you came from :)

          Sexual assault prevention and more empathy help us all.

          Also:

          GIF
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          Natasha Vargas-Cooperareyouserious221
          3/13/15 6:36pm
          GIF
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        JeremyNatasha Vargas-Cooper
        3/13/15 9:17pm

        As a gay grad student:

        I felt alienated and marginalized by the intense heteronormative hubris. I didn't connect to any of the videos or essays.

        This entire program is so ad hoc and sloppy. It's obvious they threw the whole thing together over a weekend. I think faculty should also be required to participate.

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          a video of a bulldog sleepingNatasha Vargas-Cooper
          3/13/15 6:54pm

          At the Carnegie Mellon, Freshman Computer Science majors were (and I think, still are) required to take a class that essentially taught them about how to be a normal college student and how to have a successful work/life balance. No one complained because they were getting credit for it, and at CMU tuition isn't paid per credit. Mostly just laughed and joked about how their homework was to shower and go to parties & make friends. Honestly, I think a lot of the kids appreciated the break. At a lot of orientations, students are required to sit through engaging classes on sex education

          If this course exists, why can't Columbia require students to take a 1/2 credit mini course that meets weekly and discusses everything people need to know about respect, consent, privilege and differences? There are experts whose job & sole passion it is to teach young students about sex/consent, race, gender, & more, so why not take advantage of it?

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            IAmJoaquina video of a bulldog sleeping
            3/14/15 12:59am

            An excellent idea. A lot of schools already have programs for freshmen composed of 1-2 credit "interest" courses. At large universities, it's possible for new students to have entirely giant lecture hall courses in their first year, so these programs are an opportunity to earn credit in a smaller, discussion based setting, and with other freshmen. It'd be a lot easier to integrate if the school already has an existing structure for it. Where I am, we're trying to get our administration to require all incoming students take a 3-credit 101 course taken in the first year through gender studies. It'd be a lot like a gender studies 101 course but adapted for its purposes—the school's committee on addressing sexual assault is one of the main entities/bodies on campus calling for this change, so the course would cover sexuality, rape culture, gender-based violence, and consent. The problem is that a lot of universities aren't democratically run, administrations see students as consumers, and faculties continue to lose power & influence as the bulk of instruction is done by adjuncts or other part-time, non-tenured teachers. So who knows what will happen as administrations just keep giving lip service to addressing sexual assault on their campuses yet do nothing of substance or meaning with which to back up those claims. (yeah... i'm frustrated...)

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            a video of a bulldog sleepingIAmJoaquin
            3/14/15 1:32am

            University politics always sounds frustrating. My mom is a professor and has been on admission boards and gender equality groups and LGBT ally groups and has too many stories about how hard it is to do the normal, right, thing. At one point she claimed that the (private, not terrible) university she was working for insisted that they admit students who she claimed "had elementary school reading levels" and when she questioned this decision the board essentially agreed that the student would drop out after a semester/year but if they didn't admit people like him there would be considerable lay-offs. I'm glad you're pushing for change, though. Though, if the administration wants to talk about students as consumers, maybe including a wider range of topics in the course as well as pointing out the fact that their school might actually get press and they might include it in facts about safety with worried parents? I have no idea, though, I'm excited for you and cheering for you to help make change happen!!

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          kitteneyeNatasha Vargas-Cooper
          3/13/15 7:24pm

          Columbia has a program like this in place (or at least they did 2 years ago, when I was still at Barnard). It happens during Orientation Week. I wonder what is making this program different, aside from the art thing. I remember most people actually went to it my year.

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            Jenn still doesn't understand "following"Natasha Vargas-Cooper
            3/13/15 11:47pm

            I really liked the NZ PSA, except for the part about the bouncer rolling her into a cab. Are NZ taxi drivers all White Knights?

            Also, her hair is awesome. Sorry, had to be said.

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