Photo: Chisom Ojukwu discusses the SGA’s Survivor’s Living Guide at an event held by Preventing Sexual Assault (PSA.) SGA used the event as a space to advertise to survivors and ask for submissions for their guide. Photo by Grace Mottley.
By Grace Mottley
With a lack of institutional funding for both the Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct and the Counseling Center, survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence can often lack the resources that are necessary for their recovery. Other times, survivors just need some help making it through the dark parts of the day they couldn’t predict.
The Student Government Association’s Sexual Misconduct Prevention Committee is working to address both gaps with their new project, a living guide written by and for survivors. The committee is now working to collect anonymous responses from first and second-hand victims of sexual misconduct and compile them into one document that can be distributed to survivors.
The form asks about the kind of music that survivors listened to, books they read, and unique ways they dealt with healing. The form is anonymous, unless survivors ask for their name to be included in the guide.
“The goal is to show survivors that there are so many ways to heal people, and that not everyone heals in the same way,” said junior Chisom Ojukwu, the Deputy Director of Sexual Misconduct Prevention for SGA.
The living guide can also help survivors who want to heal in a more confidential way, according to Sophia Blake, a senior communications major and president of Preventing Sexual Assault, a student group aiming to educate the campus on sexual misconduct prevention.
“It’s giving survivors a different range of resources, as much as CARE, Title IX, but sometimes you don’t want to reach out to either,” Blake said. “It’s providing that resource for when you’re alone and triggered, and something sets you off, things you can do in that moment when you’re trying to fall asleep or walking in between classes to manage the way you feel.”
While asking survivors to use their experiences to help others may further feelings of loneliness that some experience, Blake hopes that receiving advice from other survivors will make people feel that their understood, and that they’re not alone.
“It’s nice to know that you’re not the only one living through trauma,” said senior psychology major Elena LeVan, SGA’s sexual misconduct prevention director. “That’s in part why we carefully chose to call it the living guide, because not everyone is in a place where they’re healing yet, and maybe they’re just living through the trauma.”
As of Nov. 8, the group had received 10 responses from through their anonymous form, Ojukwu said.
They hope to receive more responses as the form continues to be spread throughout the community. The group has distributed the form through various academic departments and student services, such as the LGBTQ Equity Center, the School of Behavioral and Social Sciences, the School of Arts and Humanities, and the Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
Campus Advocates Respond and Educate to Stop Violence has also been supporting the committee’s efforts. CARE has helped proofread language on flyers and emails, and will review the guide before it’s released to the community.
“CARE has already been a huge part of this living guide,” Ojukwu said. “We took these steps with them to make sure that it has been as trauma-informed as possible, not triggering at all.”
Contact information for resources like CARE and the Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct will be included in the guide, but the information will be provided by first and second-hand survivors.The Office of Strategic Communications did not respond to a request for an interview.