Southwestern College received part of a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to fight sexual violence on local campuses.
This grant will pay for new training and programs to assist victims of sexual assault and harassment, said David Caspi Southwestern College’s employee relations and Title IX special assistant.
“Sexual harassment and sexual assault has been an issue in the national news and it has also been an issue for many college campuses,” Caspi said. “So there’s a push to reduce the amount of sexual harassment. This one is geared more towards sexual assaults and violence.”
This grant is seen as a support for safety on campus. Dean of Student Services Malia Flood said that will help the campus police department, the administration, and the Title IX director work cohesively to help students. Title IX protects those in educational programs against discrimination based on sex.
“We all work very closely to support all students,” Flood said. “We want to make sure that the victims are safe and have support. And we want to make sure that we follow due process and that we do a thorough investigation so that the whole campus is safe.”
Flood said the district is committed to supporting victims of sexual assault and keeping the campus safe. This will take the form of victim advocates being trained to help other victims and training for the police department and faculty in sexual assault prevention.
The overall goal will be lowering cases of any type of sexual misconduct on school grounds. Training for officers and staff will include prevention strategies and service to victims. Specifics regarding the trainings won’t be known until an assessment meeting in December.
There has been a lot of turnover in the Title IX position. However, a new Title IX Director Gloria Chavez started working in beginning of October. She said she already has plans for the grant and points to the importance of having victim advocates to support other victims of sexual assault. Students should have someone to talk to other than the investigator and the Title IX director, she said.
“One of the things that I have heard that I’m very excited about is that we will be able to bring advocacy to our students,” Chavez said.
The grant will be split among six colleges, with Southwestern College administering it. The other colleges are Point Loma Nazarene University, University of San Diego, San Diego State University, National University and Palomar Community College. The money will be allocated to each school based on the needs of its students, Caspi said.
“The money gets spent in a variety of ways,” he said. “Each college, as part of the grant indicates what they would need the money for. So for us, the emphasis was on creating victim advocates as well as maybe training our own. Different colleges will have a slightly different mix.”
