With Sexual Assault Awareness Month coming to a close, Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment volunteers are reflecting on the initiative and looking forward to another year of programming.
PAVE closed the month with a presentation Tuesday night on sexual assaults and disabilities, lead by UW senior and McBurney Speakers Bureau representative Alex Lubniewski.
Lubniewski led a group in various activities defining different disabilities, and in the creation of a “power and control wheel,” which outlined the different ways disabled individuals can become victims of sexual assault.
Opportunities for abuse of those with disabilities can range from using intimidation to emotional abuse, or even custody of children.
Lubniewski said she thinks the level of awareness among students on campus concerning disabilities is rather low.
“[McBurney gets] a lot of people who really seem to know nothing; they’ve never consciously met someone with a disability,” Lubniewski said. “I think while people generally have a good attitude once they’re exposed, there’s a lot of people who don’t realize they’re out there.”
She said people often come up to her after presentations and say they had absolutely no idea about the issues facing disabled people at UW.
Lubniewski gave several examples of buildings on campus that are not friendly to students in wheelchairs. She noted many rooms in Memorial Union are difficult to access.
Lubniewski went on to say several floors of Van Hise require a special key to be accessed by elevator, which is something the university does not inform new students of before they arrive on campus.
This leaves many freshman confused and without a way of accessing classrooms when they first attempt to access those floors.
UW senior Sarah Baldwin and sophomore Anna Schettle — both PAVE volunteers — said they were a bit disappointed by the turnout at the event Tuesday, but different events throughout the month proved to be blockbusters.
They counted a speech by Jennifer Baumgardner, founder of the Rape Awareness Project, and the Sex Signals workshop among the most successful events.
“There’s some topics that draw in a large amount of people, and others sadly like disabilities that don’t,” Schettle said. “Awareness is definitely higher in some areas. It’s also cool though we can also have the smaller events that we get to talk to the few students who are interested in it.”
In the end, Schettle went on to say every person PAVE reaches with events counts for something.
“It’s just making the awareness, getting the word out there, and every person who shows up is one more person who is enlightened about the topic, and hopefully we’ll spread that to others,” she said.
While PAVE sees a lot of turnover of leadership like other student organizations, Baldwin said fresh faces offer new ideas on a consistent basis.?
