Stereotypes of the "typical frat guy" abound on the University of Wisconsin campus. Though details vary from one account to another, the general idea usually involves some combination of "elitist meathead" and "drunken partier."
Likewise, phrases such as "sexual assault awareness" are usually associated with organizations like the Rape Crisis Center and not the fraternity houses running along Langdon Street.
One group of UW fraternity members, however, is working to change this.
Twenty-four members of the UW Greek community participated in the Fraternity Action Coalition this spring, a six-week, one-credit seminar where UW fraternity members discuss topics surrounding sexual violence in an effort to prevent it.
"A lot of people are confused," said UW senior Mae Singerman, one of the three UW students who helped start the program in spring 2005. "When you think about sexual assault prevention, you usually think of a group of women forming a kind of support group. You don't think about a group of fraternity men being really open and discussing it."
However, according to FAC facilitator and UW junior Noah Annes, that is exactly what the FAC is.
During the bi-weekly, two-hour seminars, Annes said FAC members meet in two separate sections to discuss issues such as sexism, hyper-masculinity, feminism and homophobia, and how those issues affect relationships between men and women.
"Intervention strategies" are also discussed among the students, Annes said, to help prevent sexual violence and the environments that encourage it. These include the "bringing it home" strategy, where a person is supposed to ask someone speaking or acting insensitively to women to think about how he would feel if his sister or mother were the target of that particular behavior.
"Students look critically at their fraternity and what activities they engage in that would be considered harmful to women," Annes said.
Students are assigned readings and must write a "reflection paper" before every class, as well as a three- to five-page final paper.
The class is open only to UW fraternity members, which Annes said adds to the program's credibility.
"It's a program by Greek men, for Greek men, to discuss issues of masculinity and femininity … to battle sexual assault on campus and in the community," said Annes, who is also the vice president of the UW Inter-Fraternity Council.
Though she admits many students are not that interested when they first sign up for the seminar and often take it because they need an extra credit, Singerman said by the end of the first day, most participants are "excited" about the class.
Singerman added that many students take it to help "improve the image of the Greek community" on the UW campus, which sometimes is cast in a negative light.
"They're tired of people stereotyping them as elitist meatheads looking to score," Singerman said. "So they take the class because they don't want to be that stereotype."
UW sophomore Aaron Riggs completed the seminar two weeks ago and said that breaking down the "frat guy" stereotype was why he chose to take the class.
"It erases the stereotypes that surround the fraternities on campus — that we treat women with no respect and that all we care about is drinking and partying," Riggs said.
Riggs added he learned a lot of "figures and statistics" during the seminar that helped "open [his] mind" about numerous sexual violence issues.
The FAC's model of "providing a space" where men can discuss the root causes of sexual violence is one that works, according to Carmen Hotvedt, a violence prevention specialist for University Health Services.
"We need to stop thinking about, 'Did this class prevent one sexual assault?'" Hotvedt said, "but rather, 'Did this class affect 50 men who otherwise would not have engaged in this dialogue?'"
