[The following is a sponsored letter from PAVE-UW]

The student community is coming together to make change on campus and you are invited! Join the new Anti-Violence Coalition — a coalition for students by students to combat violence in our community.

The new Anti-Violence Coalition came together Wednesday to start creating actionable steps to combat violence in our community. These students represent issue-based organizations like the Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment-UW (PAVE-UW), the Student Title IX Advisory committee (STIXA), The Social Justice Hub, UW-Madison Culture of Respect Team and different identity-based organizations on campus, like the Latinx Student Union, Wunk Sheek and the UW-Madison BIPOC Coalition. Other organizations like WSUM 91.7 FM were also in attendance.

The conversations focused on the ways to address the high rates of sexual violence and other forms of violence on campus through different strategies of violence prevention and policy change on campus. People talked about ways to reform UWPD to better serve survivors and the campus community through trauma training and the implementation of a CAHOOTS program on campus. Also, students proposed ways to address racial equity and hate crimes on campus. People talked about policy changes to the campus’ Title IX rules to better serve survivors of sexual violence on campus, how to centralize survivor resources on campus and increasing funding for survivor services on campus.

Four working groups were proposed at the meeting. The first was the Policy Group which would focus on policies related to gender-based violence like the Title IX process, sexual assault response and reporting. The second group was the Campus Climate Group which would focus on collecting stories and narratives of peoples’ experience with violence on campus and the university’s response to reports. The next group was the Peer Education Group which would focus on violence prevention through peer-to-peer advocacy. The last proposed group was the Awareness Group which would bring awareness to the issues of violence on campus through PSAs, art installations and other visual displays and messaging on campus.

If you are interested in joining our next meeting, fill out the linked google form to sign-up. Leave your email address and ideas to make change on campus!

Link to Google Form: Anti-Violence Student Coalition Meeting Link

In Power,

Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment – UW (PAVE-UW)