Sex Assault Educator Appointed by Ariella Cohen This week, Dean of Student Life Peter Goldsmith appointed Oberlin’s Health Promotion Coordinator, Lori Morgan Flood as the College’s Sexual Assault Education Coordinator. The move follows a recommendation that came out of first meeting of the President’s Task Force on Sexual Education and Ethics and was also prompted by campus sexual assault activists who, for several years, have called for the College to create a staff position wholly concerned with educating on sexual assault and its related issues. “I hope that this is a response to student concerns,” sophomore Rebecca DeCola, one of two student members of the President’s Task Force said. “Whether or not there was programming, no one went. “Sex at 7:30” wasn’t a relevant answer. I think that there is someone who has been educated on how to educate on sexual assault and what makes for unwarranted sexual contact is tremendous progress. I hope this leads to more structural change such as an office, a college-run hot-line; clearly it’s leading to more public dialogue.” Since the 1993 inception of the College sexual offense policy, all education on the topic had fallen under the assigned duties of policy founder and Administrator Camille Hamlin-Mitchell. Over the years Hamlin-Mitchell had coordinated several educational programs, including first-year orientation workshops and training sessions for the members of the Formal Hearing Board (the hearing panel that adjudicates sexual assault cases). Oberlin’s Sexual Assault Support Team facilitated many additional educational events on campus, including an ExCo on sexual assault and an annual Rape Awareness Month with a full calendar of workshops, lectures, films and various other projects. However, many students felt that a more comprehensive and effective educational programming required the resources and energy that another, additional staff member would offer. “My understanding was that SAST was the group that did peer education and what I heard from members of SAST was that they couldn’t do it alone, they were asking for a better integrated sexual education, sexual assault education program. I came here not to do it all, but be part of the process,” Flood said. With the new division of labor, Hamlin-Mitchell will remain responsible for administering the policy, including continuing to chair the Sexual Offense Review Committee and educating on the policy itself, while Flood will coordinate educational programming on the broader issues of assault, consent, human sexuality and sexual responsibility. “I am going to work very hard in the next several weeks to put together workshops for the campus community for the semester.... Finding programming is what I do and I can do it fast. Though I would have rather had six months to coordinate programming, there are people on this campus who have been doing this work and will be valuable resources,” Flood said. In part, this shift in responsibilities came out of the first meeting of the President’s Task Force on Education and Sexual Ethics. “It came up in the task force meeting that Flood had this background and experience in rape crisis education and it seemed that was a resource members of the administration had been unaware of until that moment. Really positively, they took action on it and now have her in this new coordinator position,” De Cola said. At the close of last semester President Dye announced the formation of this task force, inviting new voices into the sexual assault dialogue, including two students new to sexual assault dialogue, faculty members and Flood. “The events of last fall brought to home to many of us that we needed to undertake education of a broader nature involving sexuality and sexual assault…It was understood that no one person can undertake education of students across every facet of these issues,” Dean of Student Life Peter Goldsmith said. Coming on the heels of two widely publicized sexual assault cases, their respective adjudication and then, months of heated campus discourse on sexual assault and proper institutional responses, Dye established the task force with a goal of creating a curriculum centered on sexual behavior, sexual decision-making and consent. “We have been too focused on policy and putting demands on policy that no policy can meet. Our Task Force is putting emphasis on prevention. Policy cannot prevent sexual assault,” Nancy Dye said. Some students are critical of the task force’s linkage between ethics and sexual assault: “[the Task Force on] Sexual Education and Ethics supports a culture...where the rapist ‘just made a bad ethical decision,’” sophomore and SAST member Myrl Beam said. Fall semester ended with the two students that had been tried for sexual assault reinstated as students, and a Speak-Out at Cox during which several rape survivors came forward and spoke about the lack of institutional support given by the College at the time of their rape. Hamlin-Mitchell’s Task Force on Sexual Assault had met three times, SORC had met twice and the previous year’s Sexual Offense Review Committee’s policy change recommendations had been sitting on the College’s lawyer’s desk for months. “The College is having an official response now, after SAST tried to raise awareness of the issues,” said Beam. “We have been routed out of that formal response. The SAST members who were on SORC worked long and hard on those changes to the policy, they defined consent, set a clear time-line, made the policy more enforceable and one that students would understand. That review process was supposed to happen rapidly: it hasn’t happened. President Dye says it is with the lawyers, Camille Hamlin-Mitchell says it has been with Dye. Wherever its been it hasn’t been with students,” she said. Unlike Hamlin-Mitchell, who came to Oberlin as an Administrator of Equity Concerns, Flood holds a Master’s degree in health education and has been trained specifically to educate on issues of human sexuality. Before coming to the Wellness Center in 1998, she both designed and implemented school and community projects on contraceptive use, HIV awareness and overall wellness. Flood began her work in this area 17 years ago with the Rape Education and Prevention Program at Central Ohio Woman’s Clinic. At Oberlin, however, Flood runs the Wellness Center, a campus resource she has expanded. This semester the Center will offer 11 classes, two free, confidential and anonymous HIV testing programs, a student intern program and full health and wellness library. In addition to her work at the center, this semester Flood also teaches a class in wellness through the department of Athletics. While the appointment of Flood appears as long-awaited progress to both students and administrators, some members of the community remain unsure of what is to happen next. “Now, finally, that this appointment is in place, I want to know what the administration saw as the problems leading to the decision and what categories do they plan to use to find what constitutes a good job as sexual assault education coordinator,” senior and SAST member Benjamin Joffe-Walt said.

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