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After several years of research and analysis, Michigan State University has released an institution-wide strategic plan to address sexual assault, sexual harassment, relationship violence, and stalking issues that collectively will help foster a safer campus community.
Show Notes
The Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct (RVSM) strategic plan builds on the work of the RVSM Expert Advisory Workgroup, which has been a major driver of RVSM efforts on campus and was tasked with creating a values-driven operational plan with recommended initiatives, timelines and metrics.
The Workgroup — co-chaired by Dr. Rebecca Campbell, professor of psychology and Lt. Andrea Munford, coordinator of the Center for Trauma-Informed Investigative Excellence at the MSU Police Department — was formed in 2018 to make immediate recommendations to transform MSU’s institutional response to RVSM and oversee the implementation of those changes in the wake of the Larry Nassar crisis. Members of the workgroup were appointed by the president based on their expertise in RVSM services, prevention, policy and/or research.
“What we've learned through conversations through the Nassar case and through other cases and conversations with survivors and with other community stakeholders is that people didn't report what was going on because we as a university didn't give them a safe place to report,” says Munford. “There was a lot of judgment and inaction in reporting. And that became more known that there was a pattern there. And so people stopped reporting because they didn't feel like it was safe to do so.”
“I also heard people didn't know where to go,” adds Campbell. “They didn't know what services we had, and they didn't know how to access them. We've had longstanding victim service programs, both in sexual assault and in relationship violence and stalking for decades, actually very strong programs, good trauma-informed services, and people didn't know that they were there. We knew that we needed to be doing more to create clear, accessible pathways to the services that we have and to strengthen those services. There was still more we needed to do in those services. Both in terms of improving options for reporting and in terms of getting support in healthcare, we needed to start over and we needed to really think through how to make accessible pathways for victims.
“We did a lot of listening. We have been in campus engagement sessions since spring of 2018. We've had an online portal forum where people could send in their suggestions, their comments, their concerns, their anger, and their fears. We read all of those. We did a crosswalk between our current programming and national recommended best practices to identify all of the gaps. And then we spent months looking at model programs, looking at what we had, and applying for grants. We have a number of initiatives in this plan that are funded in collaboration with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the Division of Victim Services, to create new programs. It was a combination of a lot of feedback, bringing some outside perspectives into the university through those funders and through consulting with national organizations to identify what would be model practices and to build out a plan around those.”
Campbell and Munford define relationship violence and sexual misconduct, and Munford defines trauma-informed.
“Being trauma-informed is really understanding what neurobiology of trauma looks like,” says Munford. “It's understanding that your body reacts in ways during trauma that somebody else may not recognize if they don't understand what that means. It's working with somebody who is in trauma and being able to support them through it because they may not know why their body and their mind is reacting a certain way and being able to guide them through that process by providing supportive measures along the way, too. Working with a survivor of sexual assault while they're in that trauma and what they're telling you about what happened may not make sense because their mind really in the midst of that trauma isn't processing it sequentially or their memories are very fragmented. And so, they're not able to say, ‘This is how it started. And this happened.’ That's not really how most people's minds work during trauma.
“So, guiding them through that process and saying, ‘I understand that you won't be able to tell me what happened from the beginning to the end manner. And that's okay. Tell me what you remember, and we can start from there.’ We've all in the past just made assumptions when someone comes forward to report something. And if it doesn't sound like an accurate story and because maybe we didn't know what trauma can do to people, we just assume they were lying. Understanding how trauma affects somebody helps us do a better investigation and helps us support a survivor better. And regardless of what process someone chooses, the outcome is better because we've supported them along the way.”
“One of the things we've been focusing on in the strategic plan is to look at all of the different stakeholder groups on campus like the survivors, the helpers, the leaders, the campus community, and our service providers to ask what training they have received,” adds Campbell. “Do they have training that's consistent with empirical research? Do they understand the impact of trauma? And are we preparing them to receive disclosures and to know how trauma affects people and to be able to respond in an empathic way and to connect people to support services? A lot of the initiatives in our strategic plan focus on training of the campus community in small groups and large groups and our leadership to know those basics of what trauma is, how trauma affects people, and what their role is in being part of a trauma-informed community.”
Campbell and Munford describe the values-driven and principles-focused approach to developing the plan and discuss how the plan needs to be intersectional.
“Violence is experienced differently in different communities, and certain communities have higher rates,” continues Campbell. “Depending on people's intersectional identities, they're going to need and want different resources. And different resources are going to feel more or less supportive or safe for them. It's not a one-size-fits-all, and we really need to be having multiple options for people depending upon what is safe and supportive for them.
“We also wanted to focus on the fact that all of our actions need to be trauma-informed, that we need to build on the work that Andrea has done in creating trauma-informed investigations to really think about how we do trauma-informed services all throughout the university. So that no matter where a survivor reaches out and to whom they may disclose, that that person has a fundamental understanding of trauma and can respond supportively and connect people to services.”
Specific initiatives of the plan?
“Our data from the Know More survey told us that the number experiencing RVSM was a much larger number than the people who were seeking help,” adds Campbell.
“Seeking help could include reporting to the police or Title IX, but it also means reaching out to victim service programs or employee assistance. And we just weren't having very many people come forward to seek help. We need to increase help seeking, and we need to make clear, accessible paths for people to receive help and support. And we simply need to reduce the number of people experiencing this. We need a real strong focus on prevention to reduce the incidents of RVSM.
“In terms of increasing help seeking, research is very clear, we need three critical things. Number one, we need trauma-informed services and clear, accessible ways to get to those services. Second, we need a trauma-informed culture. People need to feel safe to disclose, and the people in that community, particularly the leaders, need to know how to respond in a trauma-informed empathic way. And third, we have to change the way we handle RVSM sanctions and discipline. People will not report and they will not seek help if they don't believe that the institution will take it seriously. The office of the provost is initiating sweeping changes in how they approach sanctions and discipline process.
“On the side of preventing RVSM from ever happening in the first place, again, research gives us three very clear directions. Number one, we need to look at what resources and education and intervention we're providing for those who have been found responsible. Because without education and intervention, research is pretty clear they may commit those acts again. So that is often referred to as secondary prevention. For those who've already done it, what do we do to educate and intervene to make sure they don't do it again? The second key thing that research tells us we need to do is focus on the primary prevention, so it ever happening in the first place. And there what we really want to be focusing on is developing skills that all members of the community need to recognize that this is a situation that could result in relationship violence, sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, or workplace incivility, and that they have the skills to intervene.
“It's often called bystander intervention, meaning a person understands and recognizes what the dynamics are and that they have the skills and feel empowered to intervene, that they don't just sit back, that they don't just sit silently and go, ‘Oh, well. There goes so and so again being the way they are in a faculty meeting. And there they are again, treating staff that way,’ to say, ‘No, that's not okay.’ And that they have the skills and the confidence to intervene to say, ‘No, that's not going to happen. I'm concerned about your behavior. We need to redirect that.’ We need to teach people those skills. And third, we need to create respectful work environments. And we have a lot of sub-initiatives, a lot of specific projects that are really focusing on creating a respectful work environment because what that does is it sets what the behavioral expectations are. What are our norms? What do we expect all students, faculty, and staff to do in being a member of this community?”
“There's an ongoing training for leadership called, Creating and Sustaining a Respectful Work Environment,” adds Munford. “It focuses on what leaders can do in regards to early intervention and addressing behavior in the right way. And depending on the severity of it, what needs to happen from there, from creating an environment and not just creating it upfront, but sustaining it. So there's ongoing work that needs to happen, communication with folks in a unit to make sure that everyone understands that there are certain behaviors that won't be tolerated, and if that behavior does occur, following up appropriately. We must teach our leaders what the process looks like and what their part in it is. And again, giving them the tools to be able to run a unit and sustain it so that there's a culture and foundation of respect.”
What about a timeline for and evaluation of progress?
“One of the things that was really important to us in this strategic plan was developing a robust evaluation of it,” says Campbell. “Putting out a bunch of initiatives doesn't really do much if you don't evaluate them and know whether they're working. We already did one climate survey in 2019. And as part of that, we collected really rigorous baseline data in terms of the incidents of RVSM, how many people are experiencing it, what the help seeking was, where people are reporting to, and measures of climate, how are they feeling about the leadership of the university, our culture around RVSM. That provides us baseline data that then we can return to in the spring of 2022 and in the spring of 2024 to see if we're seeing demonstrable change. What we're hoping for is that the rates of help seeking - again that can include reporting, but it doesn't necessarily mean formal reporting to Title IX or the police – continue to go up; we're hoping for statistically significant improvements in those.
“We're also hoping to see that our primary prevention programs are working and that the overall incidents of relationship violence, sexual misconduct, and workplace incivility are decreasing. And we're hoping to see changes in those climate measures and that people feel that this is a serious issue of RVSM, that our leadership are invested, and that we are making significant progress in transforming the culture of that. All of those data are publicly available through the office of civil rights website. And all future evaluation data will also be public. Accountability is important; transparency is important. We need to be putting those data out for public engagement, which we have, and will continue to do so. And if we find that those metrics are not changing, it's our responsibility to dig into that to understand why. Is there a problem in our programming? Where is it missing the mark? What do we need to be doing better? How can we improve this? It's a living, breathing plan of continuous improvement and change over time.”
Campbell and Munford feel good about doing this important work.
“I'm often asked, ‘Isn't this hard, isn't this depressing?’ Certainly, there are days when it is, but by and large it's not,” Campbell says. “I love this job. I love this role because every single day, I get to meet people at MSU who are committed to this issue and want to be part of the solution. I meet people from literally all different parts of this university in all different roles who ask me about this work and who want to know how they can help. I meet deans who are committed to this work, and I meet student activists. The number of people we get to interact with here at MSU who are really committed to this work is inspiring.”
“And working with survivors of relationship violence and sexual misconduct, whether it's sexual assault or sexual harassment, and being able to make a process for them better is rewarding because they already went through a horrible traumatic event,” Munford adds. “And sometimes the processes themselves, if not done correctly, are just another traumatic event. Going through the Nassar investigation, the criminal investigation, the university investigation, I watched the layers of trauma over and over again. The failures that these survivors experienced on so many different levels are not okay, and it needs to be addressed. It can't just be, ‘Let's fix it right now for compliance to say we did;’ it has to be ongoing, and it has to be re-evaluated.
“We have to learn as we go and keep improving systems so that people have a safe place to go to report. Again, it doesn't mean reporting to police or Title IX all of the time. It can, but it means having places in the university where people are comfortable talking about their experience so that they can get support. And again, there are so many different facets to that that we have to be able to look at this comprehensively to make sure that we're covering all of these areas and building a much-improved system than what we've been working with. And for me, like Becki said, there are days you feel like you're just spinning your wheels. And then there's a breakthrough. This is my calling. This is why I'm doing the work I'm doing because people deserve better.”
It's rewarding for Campbell and Munford to have support right from the very top in President Stanley.
“President Stanley's commitment to this has been very clear from day one,” says Campbell. “Back in the days when we actually got to work in our offices at MSU, our offices are literally next door to his. We've had the opportunity to have those hallway chats with him. He asks how we're doing. He sees us heading out to different campus meetings. We see him later on and he asks, 'How did it go?’ When he came to MSU, in addition to the required training that all students, faculty and staff participate in, he asked for additional training on trauma and the impact of trauma. He is genuinely very curious and wants to know the current research on this to add that into his own knowledge as a physician.”
“He sincerely cares about the community and really wants to improve culture in many different areas,” Munford adds. “He has been very committed to the RVSM initiatives and very supportive of Becki and me and the work that we do.”
What are a couple of key takeaways you'd each like people to take from the plan?
“For our community, no matter what your role is, when you know better, you're able to do better, but you have to make the choice to do so,” Munford says. “As this plan is rolling out, be engaged, pay attention, and make a choice to do better because there's a lot of information that helps you know better.”
“We can change the culture at MSU,” Campbell adds. “It's not going to be easy, and it's not going to be quick. For it to be real, it has to be meaningful, and it has to take time. And it has to take all parts of the university. It has to take our leaders, it has to take our faculty, our deans, our staff, and our students. It has to take everybody. The plan outlines many concrete behavioral things that we can and must do to decrease the prevalence of relationship violence and sexual misconduct and to make it easier for survivors to seek help and support.
“I encourage people to read the report. It presents the underlying philosophy and the values and the principles that inform this work. It describes the process of how we did this and all of the different data sources. And it lays out all of the different initiatives.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
The Workgroup — co-chaired by Dr. Rebecca Campbell, professor of psychology and Lt. Andrea Munford, coordinator of the Center for Trauma-Informed Investigative Excellence at the MSU Police Department — was formed in 2018 to make immediate recommendations to transform MSU’s institutional response to RVSM and oversee the implementation of those changes in the wake of the Larry Nassar crisis. Members of the workgroup were appointed by the president based on their expertise in RVSM services, prevention, policy and/or research.
“What we've learned through conversations through the Nassar case and through other cases and conversations with survivors and with other community stakeholders is that people didn't report what was going on because we as a university didn't give them a safe place to report,” says Munford. “There was a lot of judgment and inaction in reporting. And that became more known that there was a pattern there. And so people stopped reporting because they didn't feel like it was safe to do so.”
“I also heard people didn't know where to go,” adds Campbell. “They didn't know what services we had, and they didn't know how to access them. We've had longstanding victim service programs, both in sexual assault and in relationship violence and stalking for decades, actually very strong programs, good trauma-informed services, and people didn't know that they were there. We knew that we needed to be doing more to create clear, accessible pathways to the services that we have and to strengthen those services. There was still more we needed to do in those services. Both in terms of improving options for reporting and in terms of getting support in healthcare, we needed to start over and we needed to really think through how to make accessible pathways for victims.
“We did a lot of listening. We have been in campus engagement sessions since spring of 2018. We've had an online portal forum where people could send in their suggestions, their comments, their concerns, their anger, and their fears. We read all of those. We did a crosswalk between our current programming and national recommended best practices to identify all of the gaps. And then we spent months looking at model programs, looking at what we had, and applying for grants. We have a number of initiatives in this plan that are funded in collaboration with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the Division of Victim Services, to create new programs. It was a combination of a lot of feedback, bringing some outside perspectives into the university through those funders and through consulting with national organizations to identify what would be model practices and to build out a plan around those.”
Campbell and Munford define relationship violence and sexual misconduct, and Munford defines trauma-informed.
“Being trauma-informed is really understanding what neurobiology of trauma looks like,” says Munford. “It's understanding that your body reacts in ways during trauma that somebody else may not recognize if they don't understand what that means. It's working with somebody who is in trauma and being able to support them through it because they may not know why their body and their mind is reacting a certain way and being able to guide them through that process by providing supportive measures along the way, too. Working with a survivor of sexual assault while they're in that trauma and what they're telling you about what happened may not make sense because their mind really in the midst of that trauma isn't processing it sequentially or their memories are very fragmented. And so, they're not able to say, ‘This is how it started. And this happened.’ That's not really how most people's minds work during trauma.
“So, guiding them through that process and saying, ‘I understand that you won't be able to tell me what happened from the beginning to the end manner. And that's okay. Tell me what you remember, and we can start from there.’ We've all in the past just made assumptions when someone comes forward to report something. And if it doesn't sound like an accurate story and because maybe we didn't know what trauma can do to people, we just assume they were lying. Understanding how trauma affects somebody helps us do a better investigation and helps us support a survivor better. And regardless of what process someone chooses, the outcome is better because we've supported them along the way.”
“One of the things we've been focusing on in the strategic plan is to look at all of the different stakeholder groups on campus like the survivors, the helpers, the leaders, the campus community, and our service providers to ask what training they have received,” adds Campbell. “Do they have training that's consistent with empirical research? Do they understand the impact of trauma? And are we preparing them to receive disclosures and to know how trauma affects people and to be able to respond in an empathic way and to connect people to support services? A lot of the initiatives in our strategic plan focus on training of the campus community in small groups and large groups and our leadership to know those basics of what trauma is, how trauma affects people, and what their role is in being part of a trauma-informed community.”
Campbell and Munford describe the values-driven and principles-focused approach to developing the plan and discuss how the plan needs to be intersectional.
“Violence is experienced differently in different communities, and certain communities have higher rates,” continues Campbell. “Depending on people's intersectional identities, they're going to need and want different resources. And different resources are going to feel more or less supportive or safe for them. It's not a one-size-fits-all, and we really need to be having multiple options for people depending upon what is safe and supportive for them.
“We also wanted to focus on the fact that all of our actions need to be trauma-informed, that we need to build on the work that Andrea has done in creating trauma-informed investigations to really think about how we do trauma-informed services all throughout the university. So that no matter where a survivor reaches out and to whom they may disclose, that that person has a fundamental understanding of trauma and can respond supportively and connect people to services.”
Specific initiatives of the plan?
“Our data from the Know More survey told us that the number experiencing RVSM was a much larger number than the people who were seeking help,” adds Campbell.
“Seeking help could include reporting to the police or Title IX, but it also means reaching out to victim service programs or employee assistance. And we just weren't having very many people come forward to seek help. We need to increase help seeking, and we need to make clear, accessible paths for people to receive help and support. And we simply need to reduce the number of people experiencing this. We need a real strong focus on prevention to reduce the incidents of RVSM.
“In terms of increasing help seeking, research is very clear, we need three critical things. Number one, we need trauma-informed services and clear, accessible ways to get to those services. Second, we need a trauma-informed culture. People need to feel safe to disclose, and the people in that community, particularly the leaders, need to know how to respond in a trauma-informed empathic way. And third, we have to change the way we handle RVSM sanctions and discipline. People will not report and they will not seek help if they don't believe that the institution will take it seriously. The office of the provost is initiating sweeping changes in how they approach sanctions and discipline process.
“On the side of preventing RVSM from ever happening in the first place, again, research gives us three very clear directions. Number one, we need to look at what resources and education and intervention we're providing for those who have been found responsible. Because without education and intervention, research is pretty clear they may commit those acts again. So that is often referred to as secondary prevention. For those who've already done it, what do we do to educate and intervene to make sure they don't do it again? The second key thing that research tells us we need to do is focus on the primary prevention, so it ever happening in the first place. And there what we really want to be focusing on is developing skills that all members of the community need to recognize that this is a situation that could result in relationship violence, sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, or workplace incivility, and that they have the skills to intervene.
“It's often called bystander intervention, meaning a person understands and recognizes what the dynamics are and that they have the skills and feel empowered to intervene, that they don't just sit back, that they don't just sit silently and go, ‘Oh, well. There goes so and so again being the way they are in a faculty meeting. And there they are again, treating staff that way,’ to say, ‘No, that's not okay.’ And that they have the skills and the confidence to intervene to say, ‘No, that's not going to happen. I'm concerned about your behavior. We need to redirect that.’ We need to teach people those skills. And third, we need to create respectful work environments. And we have a lot of sub-initiatives, a lot of specific projects that are really focusing on creating a respectful work environment because what that does is it sets what the behavioral expectations are. What are our norms? What do we expect all students, faculty, and staff to do in being a member of this community?”
“There's an ongoing training for leadership called, Creating and Sustaining a Respectful Work Environment,” adds Munford. “It focuses on what leaders can do in regards to early intervention and addressing behavior in the right way. And depending on the severity of it, what needs to happen from there, from creating an environment and not just creating it upfront, but sustaining it. So there's ongoing work that needs to happen, communication with folks in a unit to make sure that everyone understands that there are certain behaviors that won't be tolerated, and if that behavior does occur, following up appropriately. We must teach our leaders what the process looks like and what their part in it is. And again, giving them the tools to be able to run a unit and sustain it so that there's a culture and foundation of respect.”
What about a timeline for and evaluation of progress?
“One of the things that was really important to us in this strategic plan was developing a robust evaluation of it,” says Campbell. “Putting out a bunch of initiatives doesn't really do much if you don't evaluate them and know whether they're working. We already did one climate survey in 2019. And as part of that, we collected really rigorous baseline data in terms of the incidents of RVSM, how many people are experiencing it, what the help seeking was, where people are reporting to, and measures of climate, how are they feeling about the leadership of the university, our culture around RVSM. That provides us baseline data that then we can return to in the spring of 2022 and in the spring of 2024 to see if we're seeing demonstrable change. What we're hoping for is that the rates of help seeking - again that can include reporting, but it doesn't necessarily mean formal reporting to Title IX or the police – continue to go up; we're hoping for statistically significant improvements in those.
“We're also hoping to see that our primary prevention programs are working and that the overall incidents of relationship violence, sexual misconduct, and workplace incivility are decreasing. And we're hoping to see changes in those climate measures and that people feel that this is a serious issue of RVSM, that our leadership are invested, and that we are making significant progress in transforming the culture of that. All of those data are publicly available through the office of civil rights website. And all future evaluation data will also be public. Accountability is important; transparency is important. We need to be putting those data out for public engagement, which we have, and will continue to do so. And if we find that those metrics are not changing, it's our responsibility to dig into that to understand why. Is there a problem in our programming? Where is it missing the mark? What do we need to be doing better? How can we improve this? It's a living, breathing plan of continuous improvement and change over time.”
Campbell and Munford feel good about doing this important work.
“I'm often asked, ‘Isn't this hard, isn't this depressing?’ Certainly, there are days when it is, but by and large it's not,” Campbell says. “I love this job. I love this role because every single day, I get to meet people at MSU who are committed to this issue and want to be part of the solution. I meet people from literally all different parts of this university in all different roles who ask me about this work and who want to know how they can help. I meet deans who are committed to this work, and I meet student activists. The number of people we get to interact with here at MSU who are really committed to this work is inspiring.”
“And working with survivors of relationship violence and sexual misconduct, whether it's sexual assault or sexual harassment, and being able to make a process for them better is rewarding because they already went through a horrible traumatic event,” Munford adds. “And sometimes the processes themselves, if not done correctly, are just another traumatic event. Going through the Nassar investigation, the criminal investigation, the university investigation, I watched the layers of trauma over and over again. The failures that these survivors experienced on so many different levels are not okay, and it needs to be addressed. It can't just be, ‘Let's fix it right now for compliance to say we did;’ it has to be ongoing, and it has to be re-evaluated.
“We have to learn as we go and keep improving systems so that people have a safe place to go to report. Again, it doesn't mean reporting to police or Title IX all of the time. It can, but it means having places in the university where people are comfortable talking about their experience so that they can get support. And again, there are so many different facets to that that we have to be able to look at this comprehensively to make sure that we're covering all of these areas and building a much-improved system than what we've been working with. And for me, like Becki said, there are days you feel like you're just spinning your wheels. And then there's a breakthrough. This is my calling. This is why I'm doing the work I'm doing because people deserve better.”
It's rewarding for Campbell and Munford to have support right from the very top in President Stanley.
“President Stanley's commitment to this has been very clear from day one,” says Campbell. “Back in the days when we actually got to work in our offices at MSU, our offices are literally next door to his. We've had the opportunity to have those hallway chats with him. He asks how we're doing. He sees us heading out to different campus meetings. We see him later on and he asks, 'How did it go?’ When he came to MSU, in addition to the required training that all students, faculty and staff participate in, he asked for additional training on trauma and the impact of trauma. He is genuinely very curious and wants to know the current research on this to add that into his own knowledge as a physician.”
“He sincerely cares about the community and really wants to improve culture in many different areas,” Munford adds. “He has been very committed to the RVSM initiatives and very supportive of Becki and me and the work that we do.”
What are a couple of key takeaways you'd each like people to take from the plan?
“For our community, no matter what your role is, when you know better, you're able to do better, but you have to make the choice to do so,” Munford says. “As this plan is rolling out, be engaged, pay attention, and make a choice to do better because there's a lot of information that helps you know better.”
“We can change the culture at MSU,” Campbell adds. “It's not going to be easy, and it's not going to be quick. For it to be real, it has to be meaningful, and it has to take time. And it has to take all parts of the university. It has to take our leaders, it has to take our faculty, our deans, our staff, and our students. It has to take everybody. The plan outlines many concrete behavioral things that we can and must do to decrease the prevalence of relationship violence and sexual misconduct and to make it easier for survivors to seek help and support.
“I encourage people to read the report. It presents the underlying philosophy and the values and the principles that inform this work. It describes the process of how we did this and all of the different data sources. And it lays out all of the different initiatives.”
MSU Today airs Sunday mornings at 9:00 on 105.1 FM and AM 870 and streams at wkar.org. Find “MSU Today with Russ White” at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.
Creators & Guests
What is MSU Today with Russ White?
MSU Today is a lively look at Michigan State University-related people, places, events and attitudes put into focus by Russ White. The show airs Saturdays at 5 P.M. and Sundays at 5 A.M. on 102.3 FM and AM 870 WKAR, and 8 P.M. on AM 760 WJR.
Russ White 0:00
This is MSU today, here's Russ white. After several years of research and analysis, Michigan State University has released an institution wide strategic plan to address sexual assault, sexual harassment, relationship violence and stalking issues that collectively will help foster a safer campus community. The relationship violence and sexual misconduct strategic plan builds on the work of the rvsm expert advisory workgroup, which has been a major driver of rvsm efforts on campus and was tasked with creating a values driven operational plan with recommended initiatives, timelines and metrics, the workgroup co chaired by Dr. Rebecca Campbell, Professor of Psychology, and Lieutenant Andrea Munford, coordinator of the Center for trauma informed investigative excellence at the MSU police department was formed in 2018, to make immediate recommendations to transform MSU institutional response to rvsm and oversee the implementation of those changes in the wake of the Larry Nasser crisis. Members of the workgroup were appointed by the president based on their expertise and rvsm, services, prevention, policy and or research.
Unknown Speaker 1:26
What we've learned through conversations through the Nasser case through other cases and conversations with survivors, with other community stakeholders is that people didn't report what was going on. Because we as a university didn't give them a safe place to report, there was a lot of judgment in reporting, there was a lot of inaction. And as that became more known, there was a pattern there. And so people stopped reporting, because they didn't feel like it was safe to do so
Russ White 1:58
that was Lieutenant Munford. Here's Dr. Campbell, we
Unknown Speaker 2:01
also heard people didn't know where to go. They didn't know what services we had, they didn't know how to access them. We've had long standing victim service programs, both in sexual assault and in relationship and relationship violence, and stalking for decades, really, actually very strong programs, good trauma informed services, and people didn't know that they were there. So we knew that we needed to be doing more to create clear, accessible pathways to the services that we have and to strengthen those services. But there were still more we needed to do in those services. So both in terms of improving options for recording. And in terms of getting support and health care, we needed to start over and we needed to really think through how to make accessible pathways for victims.
Russ White 2:51
So then how did you and your team go about developing the plan?
Unknown Speaker 2:56
We did a lot of listening. We did a lot of listening. We have been in campus engagement sessions since spring of 2018. We've had an online portal forum where people could send in their suggestions, their comments, their concerns, their anger, their fears. We read all of those. We did a crosswalk between our current programming and national recommended best practices to identify all of the gaps. And then we spent months looking at model programs looking at what we had on applying for grants, we have a number of initiatives in this plan that are funded in collaboration with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the division of victim services, to create new programs. So it was a combination of a lot of feedback, bringing some outside perspectives into the university through those funders through consulting with national organizations to to identify what would be that model practices and to build out a plan
Russ White 3:56
around those what is the environmental scan process and findings? What is that? And you know, what did you find?
Unknown Speaker 4:03
So we did campus listening sessions, we had an online portal forum, we've had two independent law firms do comprehensive reviews of MSU is Title Nine policies and victim service programs. We have we did a comprehensive campus climate survey, we're over 15,000 students, faculty and staff participated in that process. We did campus engagement sessions and discussion sessions after that nearly 500 people attended those to talk about the survey findings. And President Stanley met directly with survivors and their families and their allies to hear directly from them about their experiences and their concerns. And what we heard across all of those different sources was a very consistent message that we need culture change here at MSU that our leaders need to lead with integrity that our campus community needs to come together to support survivors and to focus on preventing this from happening in the first place a real strong emphasis on strengthening our prevention programming, and that we need to make it easier for survivors to seek help. And that as we do this, we really need to think about the fact that violence does not affect each and every community equally. Our data show pretty clearly that we have higher rates among members of the LGBTQIA plus communities, that people with disabilities experienced violence at higher rates, and that racial and ethnic minorities, particularly women of color, report, higher rates of sexual harassment and workplace incivility. So there's we think about this, we need to take what's called an intersectional approach. It's an idea that came from distinguished law professor Kimberly Crenshaw, that you need to be thinking about how violence and victimization affects people with different identities and different intersecting identities, and that the programming really needs to be attuned to those factors. So that's the environmental scan gave us a lot of data and a pretty big challenge in front of us in terms of that we need to do two things, we need to increase help seeking and make it easier for people to seek help. And we need to decrease incidents, we need to decrease the number of people who are experiencing rvsm, I think talking to
Unknown Speaker 6:15
survivors to it became more clear about the need for supportive systems for them to report it. You know, as Becky said, we really had to look at our culture amongst our leadership, and focus on educating people just about the inferred power dynamics, they're there they exist, people don't realize, some do some don't how much those come into play in situations of harassment, or incivility, which are no more survey really gave us a lot of information about how often that's really happening. And so, working with our leaders, empowering them, giving them tools to recognize these things for early intervention, to help them understand what the process looks like for a claimant going through it, and how, you know, important those measures are to provide support to provide, you know, the opportunity for them within their workplace, to be able to talk to somebody and get support for that. And also to be self reflective about how they are using their own power dynamics in the workplace. It's, you know, one of those things where it's there all the time, and until you really hear somebody talk about it, you just don't know what's happening.
Russ White 7:38
Could you one of you, or both define what we mean, when we see relationship violence and sexual misconduct? Maybe it's obvious, but how would you define it?
Unknown Speaker 7:48
relationship violence is when you're looking at people's intimate relationships. And again, that's power dynamics come into play a lot here too. And there's a lot of manipulation, there's, you know, physical abuse, sexual abuse, a lot of different factors that go into a relationship that can cause it to be very unhealthy, very unbalanced. And a lot of these, you know, power plays are really used to isolate victims to really prevent ways for a victim to report. And so it's important to help people understand the signs of that, so that they can assist somebody in getting help seeking, it's really important for us to look at, and I mean, us as a community, our own, like biases about what we think or, or predetermine thoughts about what we think someone should do that situation, we automatically think someone should ask for help. But that's not always a safe opportunity for a victim to do that. When we look at sexual misconduct, there can be a whole range from, you know, sexual harassment, in variations of that also to sexual assault. And there can be, like I said, a whole range of things that could fall into that
Russ White 9:03
category. And re if you could define trauma informed which you've pioneered,
Unknown Speaker 9:09
being trauma informed, is really understanding what neurobiology of trauma looks like. It's understanding that your body reacts in ways during trauma that somebody else may not recognize if they don't understand what that means. It's working with somebody who is in trauma, and being able to support them through it, because they may not know why their body why their mind is reacting a certain way and being able to guide them through that process by providing supportive measures along the way to, you know, working with a survivor of sexual assault, while they're in that trauma, what they're telling you about what happened may not make sense because their mind really in the midst of that trauma isn't processing it sequentially, or their their memory They're very fragmented. And so they're not able to say, this is how it started. And this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened. That's not really how most people's minds work during trauma. So guiding them through that process and saying, I understand that you won't be able to tell me what happened, you know, in the beginning to the end manner. And that's okay. Tell me what you remember. And we can start from there. So, you know, we've all in the past just made assumptions about when someone comes forward to report something. And it doesn't sound like an accurate story. And instead of, because maybe we didn't know what trauma can do to people, we just assumed they were lying. So understanding how trauma affects somebody helps us do a better investigation helps us support a survivor better. And regardless of what process someone chooses, that outcome is better, because we've supported them along the way. I would
Unknown Speaker 11:01
say one of the things we've been focusing on in the strategic plan is to look at the all of the different stakeholder groups on campus survivors, the helpers, the leaders, campus community, or service providers to ask, what training have they received? Do they have training that's consistent with empirical research? Do they understand the impact of trauma? And are we preparing them to receive disclosures and to know how trauma affects people, and to be able to respond in an empathic way and to connect people to support services? So a lot of the initiatives in our strategic plan, focus on training of the campus community in small groups and large groups with our leadership have coming back to those basics of what trauma is how trauma affects people and what their role is, in being part of a trauma informed community.
Russ White 11:59
Do you want to comment on the plan principles? What are they and why are they important?
Unknown Speaker 12:04
So we followed a values driven principles focused approach to developing this plan. And some key principles that we focused on was that our work needs to be intersectional, that it needs to be attending to the fact that violence is experienced differently in different communities, and that certain communities have higher rates, and that depending on people's intersectional identities, they're going to need different resources want different resources, and different resources are going to feel more or less supportive or safe for them. And so that it's not a one size fits all, and that we really need to be having multiple options for people depending upon what is safe and supportive for them. We also wanted to focus on the fact that all of our actions need to be trauma informed, that we need to build on the work that Andrea has done in creating trauma informed investigations to really think about how we do trauma informed services all throughout the university. So that no matter where a survivor reaches out to who they may disclose that that person has a fundamental understanding of trauma and can respond supportively and connect people to services,
Russ White 13:13
what about some of the aims and initiatives now than some of the specifics of the plan.
Unknown Speaker 13:18
So what our data from the nomor survey told us was that the number of people experiencing rvsm was a much larger number than the people who were seeking help. And seeking help could include reporting to the police or title nine, but it also means reaching out to victim service programs or employee assistance. And and we just weren't having very many people come forward to seek help. So our first strategic game is that we need to increase help seeking we need to make clear accessible paths for people to receive help and support. And our second aim is is that we simply need to reduce the number of people experiencing this. So we need a real strong focus on prevention, and to reduce the incidence of rvsm. So with those two clear strategic games to increase help seeking and reduce incidents reduce the number of people, we then outlined a number of initiatives that map onto what research tells us will increase help seeking and will decrease incidence. So in terms of increasing help seeking research is very clear. We need three critical things. Number one, we need trauma informed services and clear accessible ways to get to those services. Second, we need a trauma informed culture. People need to feel safe to disclose and the people in that community particularly the leaders need to know how to respond in a trauma informed empathic way. And third, we have to change the way we handle rvsm sanctions and discipline people will not report and they will not seek help if they don't believe that the institution will take it seriously. So the Office of the Provost Is initiating sweeping changes in how they approach sanctions and discipline process that is noted in the rvsm strategic plan. But the work for that is being done in the Office of the Provost on the side of preventing rvsm from ever happening in the first place. Again, research gives us three very clear directions. Number one, we need to look at what resources and education and intervention were providing for those who have been found responsible. Because without education and intervention, research is pretty clear, they may committed those acts again. So that is often referred to as secondary prevention. For those who've already done it, what do we do to educate and intervene to make sure they don't do it again, the second key thing that research tells us we need to do is focus on the primary prevention so ever happening in the first place. And they're what we really want to be focusing on is developing skills, that all members of the community have the skills to recognize that this is a situation that could result in relationship violence, sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, workplace incivility, and that they have the skills to intervene. This is often called bystander intervention, that they understand what those dynamics are, they recognize them, and that they have the skills and feel empowered to intervene that they don't just sit back, that they don't just sit silently and go, Oh, well, there goes. So and So again, being you know, the way they are in a faculty meeting, there they are, again, treating staff that way to say no, that's not okay. And that they have the skills and the, in the confidence to intervene to say, Nope, that that that's not going to happen, you know, I'm concerned about your behavior, we need to redirect that. So we need to teach people those skills. And third, that we need to create respectful work environments. And we have a lot of sub initiatives, a lot of specific projects that are really focusing on creating a respectful work environment, because what that does is it sets what the behavioral expectations are, what are our norms? What do we expect all students, faculty and staff to do in being a member of this community,
Unknown Speaker 17:13
there's a initiative that talks about an ongoing training for leadership called creating and sustaining a respectful work environment. And it really focuses on what leaders can do in regards to early intervention, when they something intervening and, you know, addressing behavior right away. And depending on the severity of it, you know, what needs to happen from there, from creating a environment. And not just creating it upfront, but sustaining it. So there's ongoing work that needs to happen. Communication with with folks in the unit to make sure that everyone understands that there's certain behavior that won't be tolerated, and following up if that behavior does occur, following up appropriately, so teaching leaders what the process looks like, what their part in it is, and again, giving them the tools to be able to run a unit and sustain it so that there's a culture. That's the foundation is respect.
Unknown Speaker 18:19
One of the things I think that's important to highlight about that training series that Andrea just mentioned, is it's been a great example, of changing the way we work here at MSU. Just in terms of putting together that training program. What we heard so often is MSU operates in silos, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. There's not enough cross unit collaboration. That training has been a collaboration of so many different units, academic HR Office of Employee Relations, Andrea's role in the Office of the President, colleagues with content expertise, and really bringing both the academic and the support side and the administration and the faculty content expertise together to develop this training program.
Russ White 19:03
How about a little bit just on timeline evaluation? How will you know if we're have making some progress?
Unknown Speaker 19:11
So one of the things that was really important to us in this strategic plan was developing a robot robust evaluation of it that putting out a bunch of initiatives doesn't really do much if you don't evaluate them and know whether they're working. So we already did one climate survey in 2019. And as part of that, we collected really rigorous baseline data in terms of the incidents of rvsm how many people are experiencing it? What the help seeking was where people are reporting to and measures of climate, how are they feeling about the leadership of the university, our culture around rvsm that provides us baseline data that then we can return to in the spring of 2022 and the spring of 2024 to see if we're seeing demonstrable change what we're hope For us is that the rates of help seeking again, that can include reporting, but it doesn't necessarily mean formal reporting to title nine or the police. But to seeking health, we expect those rates to go up. We're hoping for statistically significant improvements in those. We're also hoping to see that our primary prevention programs are working, and that the overall incidence of relationship violence, sexual misconduct, workplace incivility are decreasing. And we're hoping to see changes in those climate measures that people feel that this is a serious issue of rvsm, that our leadership are invested. And that we are making significant progress in transforming the culture of that all of those data are publicly available through the Office of Civil Rights website. And all future evaluation data will also be public. accountability is important. Transparency is important. So we need to be putting those data out for public engagement, which we have, and we'll continue to do so. And if we find that those metrics are not changing, it's up. It's it's our responsibility to dig into that to understand why, you know, is there a problem in our programming? Where's that missing the mark? What do we need to be doing better? How can we improve this? It's a living, breathing plan of continuous improvement and change over time.
Russ White 21:17
Why is this important to both of you to be doing this important work? You know, I'm
Unknown Speaker 21:22
often asked, you know, isn't this hard isn't this depressing, and certainly, there's days when it is. But by and large, it's not. I love this job. I love this role. Because I get every single day, I get to meet people at MSU who are committed to this issue and want to be part of the solution. I meet people from literally all different parts of this university, and all different roles that I remember at different events meeting people from IPF infrastructure planning and facilities, asking me about this work and wanting to know how they can help that I need. Dean's who are committed to this work, I need student activists. And the number of people that we get to interact with here at MSU, who are really committed to this work is it's inspiring, and working with survivors of relationship violence, sexual misconduct,
Unknown Speaker 22:14
whether it's sexual assault, sexual harassment, being able to make a process for them better, because they already went through a horrible traumatic event. And sometimes the processes themselves, if not done correctly, are just another traumatic event. And, you know, a lot of the research that Becky has done, and we look at systems and how to improve, and being able to have a part in that to make a system better for somebody that's already gone through something horrible, to make systems that are supportive, that are not re traumatizing. It's just so important, you know, going through the the nesser. investigation, the criminal investigation, the University investigation, and just watching the layers of trauma over and over and over again, the failure that these survivors experienced on so many different levels. That's not okay. And it needs to be addressed. And it needs to be, again, going back to that creating and sustaining. It can't just be let's fix it right now. for compliance to say we did. It has to be ongoing, it has to be reevaluated. We have to learn as we go and keep improving systems, so that people have a safe place to go to report. Again, it doesn't mean reporting to police or, or title nine all of the time it can, but having places in the university that people are comfortable talking about their experience so that they can get support. And again, there's so many different facets to that, that we have to be able to look at this comprehensively to make sure that we're covering all of these areas, and building a really a much improved system than what we've been working with. And for me, like Becky said, there are days that are just, you know, you feel like you're just spinning your wheels. And then there's a breakthrough. This is my calling. This is why I'm doing the work I'm doing because people deserve better.
Russ White 24:25
It's got to be rewarding to have support right from President Stanley from the very top.
Unknown Speaker 24:30
It is the president Stanley's commitment to this has been very clear from day one. Back in the days when we actually got to work in our offices at MSU. Our offices are literally next door to him. You know, we've had the opportunity to have those kind of hallway chats with him. He asks how we're doing, he sees us, you know, heading out to different campus meetings. We see him later on. He's like, how did it go when he came to MSU. He, in addition to the required training that all students, faculty and staff participate Hayden, he asked for additional training on trauma, the impact of trauma. And I have to say it, you know, I've trained a lot of folks in the neurobiology of trauma. And it was refreshing training a physician. Because there's usually a segment of the training where we have to go through basic neurobiology. So I would say something like in the limbic system, and he just nods like, right, you're a physician, you know what that is, we can just skip that section and move to the next part. So he was genuinely very, you know, curious and wanting to know the current research on this and to and to add that into his own knowledge. As a physician, he sincerely cares about the community, and really wants to improve culture in many different areas. But he has been very committed
Unknown Speaker 25:44
to the rvsm initiatives, and very supportive of Becky and I, and and the work that we do,
Russ White 25:50
what are a couple of key takeaways, you'd each like people to take from the plan
Unknown Speaker 25:57
for our community know, no matter what your role is, when you know better, you're able to do better, but you have to make the choice to do so. So as this plan is rolling out, be engaged, pay attention, make a choice to do better, because here's a lot of information that helps you know better, we can change the culture at MSU. It's not going to be easy, it's not going to be quick. For it to be real, it has to be meaningful, it has to take time. And it has to take all parts of the university, it has to take our leaders, it has to take our faculty or Dean's or staff or students, it has to take everybody. The plan outlines many concrete behavioral things that we can and must do to decrease the prevalence of relationship violence and sexual misconduct and make it easier for survivors to seek help and support. Yeah, and I encourage people to read it. It presents the underlying philosophy, the values and the principles that inform this work. It describes the process of how we did this all of the different data sources. And it lays out all of the different initiatives, we have tables upon tables that outline which unit is responsible for this, what's the timeline for this? Where's the funding for this? What are we expecting to to include I am Professor of Psychology I also am a professor of program evaluation. I got to bring all of those skills to bear here in to outline in a very tactical way initiative by initiative what what is going to happen on what timeline and who is responsible.
Russ White 27:33
Read the plan and the mission and initiative section of President Stanley's website at president that msu.edu and keep up with ongoing efforts of the plan on twitter at no more MSU kn o w m o r ri MSU at no more MSU I'm Russ white for MSU today
Transcribed by https://otter.ai