Sexual Violence Prevention (SVP), a student-led club focused on creating campus-wide sexual wellness, held three events in Reid Coffee House last week. They collaborated with the Health Center to fund presentations from the nonprofit Recognize Violence, Change Culture (RVCC).
This new funding is a recent development. Just last semester, SVP was boycotting their annual orientation week presentation on consent over concerns about their unpaid labor and lack of funding.
Rebecca Patterson, an SVP leader, notes that the position in the health center that supported SVP has been empty since last semester.
The person who had previously filled that position “left the role that they were in last spring, because they were not being supported by the rest of the administration – at all,” Patterson said.
This position is still empty. Patterson says that SVP has decided to move forward with their goals despite having little integration with the administration.
The three events that SVP held last week in collaboration with RVCC were funded through the health center by the Assistant Vice President for Wellness, Aimée Milne.
RVCC is a national sexual violence prevention organization that works with 27 organizations and college campuses across the country to raise awareness about and conduct workshops to prevent sexual violence. Patterson says they originally started out as a college campus club similar to SVP.
RVCC and SVP have had an ongoing relationship since 2022. With the additional funding SVP has received, they paid RVCC to come to campus and give their consent presentations. Mary Sue Savage, the executive director and founder of RVCC, says that when student activism is properly supported, it can change the culture.
“When you have the student activism, the creativity, and with the additional investment and funding, it’s possible to change culture,” said Savage. “There are so many strengths and talents in the Whitman community. We can’t wait to see the amazing students, staff and faculty come together to create the consent-centered campus they deserve.”
Patterson says that RVCC will be coming back in a few months for SVP’s “sex week” events — a whole week of SVP-planned events centering on sex education, sexuality and sexual violence prevention.
“They [RVCC] just have an amazing curriculum… In our past work with them, we have just seen that they have really applicable and well-adapted activities, and that the rhetoric of all of their material is super specified to college campuses,” Patterson said.
RVCC’s art director, Shelley Magallanes, emphasizes that working with the community is imperative for sexual violence prevention.
“It’s all about uplifting the campus communities, the students, the people leading the programs. They know their communities best and we’re all about supporting them,” Magallanes said.
Patterson says that SVP’s mission is twofold. It is not just education but institutional reform.
SVP desires the “recreation of a system that is incredibly broken here,” Patterson said. Going forward, SVP hopes to see how they can further integrate with the administration, in order to embed the work of sexual violence prevention into Whitman’s cultural fabric.
“SVP has already done so much incredible work on campus with educating the community. So we just love to be that extra support, to provide resources, support them where it makes sense and to provide the comprehensive prevention programming that’s really gonna create that culture of change,” Savage said.
Last week’s events highlight SVP’s continued advocacy for victims of sexual assault. These events act as a bridge between SVP and the greater campus community to reach common ground in providing a better environment for sexual assault victims.
“We want to help make SVP a really strong program that lasts throughout the generations. That way, generation after generation of Whitman students can get this continued education,” Magallanes said.
