University of Virgina Suspends ALL Fraternities Following Rolling Stone Article

On November 19th, Rolling Stone published a deeply researched article, called A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA, that related the horrific - and not uncommon - experience of Jackie, a college freshman at UVA who was brutally and violently raped over a period of 3 hours by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi frat house.

Jackie had taken three hours getting ready, straightening her long, dark, wavy hair. She'd congratulated herself on her choice of a tasteful red dress with a high neckline. Now, climbing the frat-house stairs with Drew, Jackie felt excited. Drew ushered Jackie into a bedroom, shutting the door behind them. The room was pitch-black inside. Jackie blindly turned toward Drew, uttering his name. At that same moment, she says, she detected movement in the room – and felt someone bump into her. Jackie began to scream.

"Shut up," she heard a man's voice say as a body barreled into her, tripping her backward and sending them both crashing through a low glass table. There was a heavy person on top of her, spreading open her thighs, and another person kneeling on her hair, hands pinning down her arms, sharp shards digging into her back, and excited male voices rising all around her. When yet another hand clamped over her mouth, Jackie bit it, and the hand became a fist that punched her in the face. The men surrounding her began to laugh. For a hopeful moment Jackie wondered if this wasn't some collegiate prank. Perhaps at any second someone would flick on the lights and they'd return to the party.
"Grab its motherfucking leg," she heard a voice say. And that's when Jackie knew she was going to be raped.

She remembers every moment of the next three hours of agony, during which, she says, seven men took turns raping her, while two more – her date, Drew, and another man – gave instruction and encouragement. She remembers how the spectators swigged beers, and how they called each other nicknames like Armpit and Blanket. She remembers the men's heft and their sour reek of alcohol mixed with the pungency of marijuana. Most of all, Jackie remembers the pain and the pounding that went on and on.

It only gets worse from there.

Kudos to Rolling Stone for investigating and reporting this story - this is what responsible journalism looks like.

Fortunately, the story went viral. The revelation allowed many more young women to come forward with their stories. Here are two of their stories - see Rape at UVA: Students Say Jackie Was Not Alone for the remainder.

Sadly
I was also raped at UVA in a frat house in 2013. I reported it through the Sexual Misconduct Board at the University and had it tried in 2014. My evidence included texts calling for help, police testimony consistent with mine, and numerous witnesses. But the University still found him innocent. I found Nicole Eramo very unfeeling as well — sociopathic, almost. She later told me she didn't believe the studies that showed rapists, in particular, were repeat offenders of this heinous crime. It was a very negative experience to go through — to be raped and then told that your offender was innocent. I even left clothing as I ran out of the frat house that the University gathered as evidence and it was never returned to me. Not that the clothing was important. It wasn't. The police discouraged me from pursuing it criminally, saying that I didn't have enough evidence to win. They also told me that I should be cautious about pursuing this formally, since court proceedings and news articles related to my case could spread publicly on the Internet. For privacy reasons (I didn't want future employers to Google me and see that I brought forward rape charges), I decided to pursue justice through the University. But the outcome of this process was painful and disappointing. I will never stop wondering why UVA so often expels students for academic lying, cheating, and stealing but has never once expelled a student for rape.

SK
I am so sorry for what happened to you, Jackie, and I wish I had been brave enough my freshman year to report what happened to me. But fearing the very same things – backlash, no consequences – I chose to stay quiet. I support you, I am proud of you and what you did is going to change lives. You are forcing an administration to admit its wrongdoings, and you are getting national attention, which will help to stop this misogyny, violence and pain from affecting more people. I know that feeling like a martyr is never going to feel as good as the girl you were before this happened to you, but your struggle has significance and you are needed in this world.

Then the unexpected happened on Friday (Nov. 21), the UVA administration suspended ALL fraternities and their activities until the beginning of the Spring semester in January, at which time a panel of students, faculty, alumni, and "other concerned parties" will offer recommendations for how to stop these incidents.

Here is the beginning of that article, which includes the full statement by the University's President.

UVA Suspends Fraternities Following Rolling Stone Campus Rape Investigation

"The wrongs described in Rolling Stone are appalling and have caused all of us to reexamine our responsibility to this community," UVA president writes in letter suspending fraternities

Joel Hawksley/For The Washington Post via Getty Images - Graduating students stand to have their pictures taken in front of the Rotunda at University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va. on May 18, 2013.

By Rolling Stone | November 22, 2014

Following Rolling Stone publishing Sabrina Rubin Erdely's harrowing report "A Rape on Campus," which detailed a pattern of sexual assault among the fraternities at the University of Virginia, many women who attended UVA emailed Rolling Stone sharing their own similar stories. After "A Rape on Campus" went viral, the school itself acknowledged the Rolling Stone article by promising to make changes to their student sexual misconduct policy. Now, the University is taking even more stern action.

President Teresa A. Sullivan announced in a letter to students and alumni that the school's fraternities have been suspended effective immediately. The suspension will last until January 9, 2015, which marks the beginning of the spring semester. In that time, "we will assemble groups of students, faculty, alumni, and other concerned parties to discuss our next steps in preventing sexual assault and sexual violence on Grounds," Sullivan writes.

In my opinion, the only way this is going to change is to take drastic steps - the Fraternities at UVA should remain closed for the rest of the school year, with the students placed in residence halls are allowed to move into off-campus housing.

The administration needs education on rape, date rape, toxic masculinity, and the rape culture that exists on campuses around the country, but especially in some fraternities. The people who turned a blind eye to these events in ignorance or in fear of bad publicity need to be educated on how alcohol and drugs, toxic masculinity, and entitlement and privilege can lead to these type of gang rape situations.

Further, any future rapes that are reported and verified will result in the permanent closure of a given fraternity. Period. 

This needs to be the basic policy on EVERY campus in the country, not just UVA.

Frat Brothers Rape 300% More - 1 in 5 Women Is Sexually Assaulted On Campus

 frat boys

I don't know if we need to ban fraternities, but this is certainly a abysmal statistic - and some people still try to reject the notion of "rape culture."

It is pretty clear, however, that when young, traditional men come together in large groups, their collective IQ drops considerably and their moral compass gets completely derailed.

Frat Brothers Rape 300% More. 1 in 5 Women Is Sexually Assaulted On Campus. Should We Ban Frats?

The stats on campus sexual violence are pretty stark.

Photo Credit: Wallenrock / Shutterstock.com

September 27, 2014 | The Guardian | By Jessica Valenti

When I was at Tulane University, girls were warned about the “bad” fraternities: the ones that spiked the punch at parties with Everclear and maybe drugs, the kind of frats where girls got hurt. During my first week of class 18 years ago, rumours circulated about a girl on my floor who had been sexually assaulted by multiple men at a frat party. These issues were always discussed with a certain nonchalance – as if having at least one rapist around was an inevitable part of fraternity life.

Not much has changed.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee police are currently investigating a fraternity after several women were found labeled with red and black X’s on their hands after they had to be hospitalized with memory lapses from intoxication at a fraternity party. Last year, three sexual assaults were reported at one Texas fraternity – within just one month. At Georgia Tech, a frat brother sent around an email guide called “Luring your rapebait”. Wesleyan had a frat that was nicknamed the “Rape Factory”. In 2010, fraternity brothers at Yale University marched through campus yelling, “No means yes, yes means anal.”

These are not anomalies or bad apples: numerous studies have found that men who join fraternities are three times more likely to rape, that women in sororities are 74% more likely to experience rape than other college women, and that one in five women will be sexually assaulted in four years away at school. So it seems only natural to ask: With all of the current efforts, from the White House to college towns, to curb campus sexual assault – using “yes means yes” as a standard for consent, holding administrators accountable, touting bystander intervention – why haven’t we addressed perhaps the most obvious solution?

It’s time to talk about banning fraternities.

When sociology professors Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton conducted an intensive, landmark five-year study on college students – by living amongst, following around and interviewing students in one dorm at an anonymous Midwestern public university – they reported that two women living on their floor were sexually assaulted at fraternity parties within the first few weeks of the semester.

Armstrong, who turned the results of the study into a well-received bestseller about college inequality and a paper on sexual assault, tells me that while anti-sexual violence programs are doing all the right things, they may not be doing enough.

“I was just at University of Massachusetts and at Wesleyan, and they were talking about bystander intervention programs and that’s great – people should try to engage,” she said. “But what it leaves off the table are the organizations that put people at risk on campus.”

Armstrong reminded me of what I hear on campus visits myself – that fraternities are hotbeds for all sorts of risk beyond sexual assault: there’s also alcoholism, alcohol poisoning, people falling out of windows and dangerous hazing incidents. She insists that frats “vary tremendously” in terms of how sexually dangerous they are – traditionally African American frats, gender-inclusive frats and multicultural frats are not as threatening as those populated by mostly-white, economically-entitled students, for example – but when you look at the overall risk fraternities create for students on campus, “reforming or preserving these organizations doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Armstrong said.

And while probably not all fraternities are hunting grounds for rapists and

not all men who join frats (or varsity sports teams) are predators, when so much sexual violence is centered around one area of campus life, something has to be done.

For Wesleyan – home of the “rape factory” frat – school administrators decided that means mandating that women be admitted to fraternities. The school announced this week that all frats must go co-ed within the next three years. While I applaud what seems a theoretical move towards equality, I don’t much like the idea of women as a “civilizing” force for men’s bad behavior.

Why try to fix something that’s irrevocably broken? Better, instead, that we take an honest look at the statistics and stories coming out of colleges and act accordingly. I realize banning frats is likely a pipe dream – the organizations are deeply embedded in college culture, they generate student programming and are supported by powerful alumni. But if we’re ready to take on college administrators, sue under Title IX, or carry mattresses on our back in protest, why not this? Why not now?

~ Jessica Valenti is a daily columnist for the Guardian US. She is the author of four books on feminism, politics and culture, and founder of Feministing.com.

Dartmouth Student Publishes “Rape Guide,” and it Results in Rape of a Young Woman Named on the Website

Any man - any human being - who would do this is a person without a conscious, otherwise known as a psychopath (antisocial personality disorder). The men responsible for the website and/or the rape should not simply be expelled, they should be arrested and charged with rape and conspiracy to commit rape.

For those men who argue there is no such thing as a "rape culture" in this country, here is the smoking gun that all of your denials are bullshit. THIS is what happens in a rape culture - rapists post "guides" on how to rape specific women and then those women get raped.

Activists demand reform after Dartmouth student publishes “rape guide”

Nearly 50,000 activists have called on Dartmouth to take immediate action to "curb the sexual assault
crisis"

Katie Mcdonough
Friday, Mar 14, 2014 


(Credit: WeNews via Flickr Creative Commons)
A student at Dartmouth College who says she was sexually assaulted on campus last month has inspired nearly 50,000 activists to call on university officials to “take action immediately to curb the sexual assault crisis” on campus.

The student said she was raped at a fraternity party weeks after a a student-affiliated website published a “rape guide” providing her name and a series of “tips” encouraging students to assault her. The incident inspired the feminist advocacy group UltraViolet to start a petition demanding accountability from the Dartmouth administration, and the issue has generated an outpouring of support and demands for change from across the country.

“Student groups have asked the school to list expulsion as the punishment for rape in the student handbook and to block access to the ‘rape guide’ website on campus. But school authorities haven’t taken any of these recommendations seriously,” the petition states. “Usually, stories like this get little attention from the news media. But if all of us speak up, Dartmouth won’t be able to hide.”

As Tara Culp-Ressler at ThinkProgress notes, Dartmouth is currently under federal investigation for alleged Title IX violations, and students have also filed a Clery Act complaint stating that school officials have failed to properly report sexual assault and hazing incidents on campus.

UltraViolet campaign Director Karin Roland told ThinkProgress that she hopes the public outcry will lead to genuine reform. “Dartmouth has had a problem with rape and sexual assault for decades. They have a long history with this issue, and student groups on campus are finally fed up and are leading the charge,” she said. “With the help of an online network of members at Ultraviolet to capture the grassroots outrage, we can really make change on this right now.”

She also said that online advocacy has helped the movement to combat sexual violence — on campus and beyond — reach a tipping point.

“Women are really fed up with rape being excused. I think that’s true on campuses, I think that’s true in our justice system, I think that’s true at the high school level, and I think that’s just becoming true across the country,” Roland explained. “The ability to connect over online networks has really empowered women to stand up and do something. If you look at everything from the reaction to Todd Akin’s legitimate rape comment, to Steubenville, to Dartmouth, you can see that women aren’t putting up with it anymore.”

The outcry from activists across the country has helped keep Dartmouth in the headlines, but much of the work is coming from student activists and faculty members from the Dartmouth community.

An editorial from Women’s and Gender Studies Professor Giavanna Munafo called on campus officials to institute policies that directly addressed sexual assault on campus. “Dartmouth has harnessed a great many resources in recent months to combat sexual assault, and this is, indeed, a good thing. But it is not enough,” she wrote. “No bystander training program, no committee, no first-responder training or added staff positions will stop rape or transform a culture that accepts and even promotes it.”

Dartmouth officials have responded to the petition by pointing out that the student responsible for the “rape guide” is currently facing disciplinary action, and it committed to making the Dartmouth community “better and safer.”

Dartmouth is just one of the 41 colleges and universities under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights for potential violations of Title IX.

~ Katie McDonough is an assistant editor for Salon, focusing on lifestyle. Follow her on Twitter @kmcdonovgh or email her at kmcdonough@salon.com.

The Suicide Rate Among College Age Men Is Four Times Greater Than Among Females

 

Suicide is a decidedly "male" problem in a lot of ways. On the whole, more women than men attempt suicide, but more men than women complete suicide. The problem is most obvious in young men and older men.

In this post at his Psychology Today blog Boys to Men (The science of masculinity and manhood), professor Miles Groth, Ph.D., of Warner College (one of the architects of the Male Studies movement, and editor of New Male Studies), examines the situation surrounding suicide among college-aged men.

If this were reversed, and women were 4x more likely to suicide than men, there would be national campaigns to raise awareness, Oprah would do a special, and President Obama would appoint a committee of morons to look into the issue. But it's only our young men - no worries, if weren't this it would be combat or some other cause.


I suspect there are a lot of areas where Dr. Groth and I diverge in our values and perspectives - but this one topic where we are on the same page. Something must be done about this crisis in our young men.

Young Men Who Commit Suicide

The Suicide Rate Among College Age Men Is Four Times Greater Than Among Females

Published on August 29, 2013 by Miles Groth, Ph.D. in Boys to Men

This week, a popular, successful young man beginning his senior year at a small liberal arts college in the Northeast left campus during one of the first days of the new semester after talking cheerfully with friends and participating in activities for new students. The next morning he was found dead, far away from home and campus. Next to him, the police told reporters, they found a suicide note. It was a "first" for the college, but it is a well-known phenomenon around the country.

Suicides among young males are four times more common than among young female, and they are occurring among ever younger males, some in their early teens. Little is understood about what motivates boys and young men to take their lives in such numbers. Of as great concern is another fact: little effort has been made to understand the trend.

The topic is at the top of the agenda of items for consideration at university and college centers for men. It now becomes another reason for stressing the need for such places on campuses. Among other topics at such centers, which are growing in number, are the relationship between fathers and sons, in particular the impact on young males of not having had a father during boyhood. Other common topics are body image and relationships with women -- and, perhaps most to the point here, their perception of how they are seen as males in contemporary culture.

The psychology of male suicide is not at all well understood, but since late adolescence is a time of identity consolidation, it is thought that being unable to answer the question "Who am I, really?" is a critical feature among college age men who consider suicide. It is also known that young males are more impulsive than females and often act without giving the consequences of their acts much thought. This might include taking a drastic decision to leave this world.

In more than 40 years of college-level teaching, I have observed thousands of young men change remarkably, especially during the last two college years. Generally on a somewhat later timetable that female peers, many undergo significant transformations only during the junior and senior years. They change in appearance, revise their persona, and perhaps for the first time make even a preliminary decision about what they want to study -- and this with only a year remaining. Their female peers have done this much earlier. Some find that they need a fifth year to finally put their intellectual, emotional, and even pre-vocational or pre-professional house in order.

Many other young men have still not decided what they want to do by the time they graduate. They return home to live with their parents -- more than ever before. By contrast, most college women know what they want to do by commencement and head into further study, if they have decided to continue with their education, into a career, or into a serious relationship that might lead to parenting children.

Just what prompts a young man to end his young life at a time when his prospects might be expected to be brightest is baffling -- unless we consider that they are facing a world that may seem not to have a place for them. And they are keenly aware of this. And they are hurt by it. Perhaps just having gotten over the fact that they are not especially welcome on college campuses -- something I have discussed in an earlier contribution -- they now face another world, the real world, that also has little good to say about men. They have all read in popular weeklies or on the internet about "the end of men" or heard the question "Are men necessary?"

As I have reported here before, the numbers of males attending college is at an all time low (about 37% nationally) in proportion to their female peers. This trend has been of concern to admissions officers for twenty years. The reasons are not clear, but they include a sense of not being welcome. But what about a young man who is among that group who matriculated, has found a place for himself on a university campus in a major he enjoys, has been engaged in campus life, and has done well academically? We must suppose that another factor is at work when he leaves in all behind on a warm summer day.

Perhaps the most vexing issue is that colleges and universities have not responded seriously to the fact -- not a guess, not a hunch -- the fact that the rate of young male suicides is so much greater than that of females during the college years. Why this has not become a topic for study and simple human concern is troubling.

I am convinced that men's centers on college campuses by their very presence raise awareness of the challenges young men face -- not only at institutions of higher learning but in contemporary culture as a whole. As a footnote to the incident mentioned at the beginning of this contribution, on hearing about that young man's suicide, an anonymous donor made a gift of $800 to the center to support its work in trying to understand, among other matters, why so many young men are ending their lives.

Here I bring issues of importance to discussion and leave it to others to advocate for policy change. In this case, I raise a question I believe is worth investigating:

Why are so many more young men taking their lives -- even young men with the special advantage of being able to afford to attend university -- and at just that moment when they have finally negotiated some of life's most demanding puzzles: Who am I? What do I want to do? Surely, this question deserves eveyone's thoughtful consideration.

It's nice to see students at the University of Arizona, here in Tucson, taking steps to redefine masculinity in an effort to reduce sexual violence. I'd really like to see similar programs in the local middle schools and high schools as well - if we can get to them when they are younger, we have a better chance of helping young men grow up to be good adult men.

UA Men's Project redefines masculinity, aims to raise awareness of rape culture

By SHELBY THOMAS 

Published May 1, 2013

Gabriela Diaz/Arizona Daily Wildcat The Men’s Project’s Devon Moule, an anthropology junior and one of the project’s founding interns, volunteers ...

With numerous on-campus programs committed to supporting various factions of the student body, the UA is now welcoming an internship program unique to the male population.

Only one semester old, The Men’s Project was developed through the Women’s Resource Center by Krista Millay, the program director of the WRC. Millay said she has always wanted to offer a space for men to talk about masculinity and about being a guy at the UA.

“If we want college men to engage critically, become their own people and be allies to other identities, then we need to create a space for them to go through that same journey, just like other students get,” Millay said. “Just like all student populations, our college men need some support that is geared toward them. The reality is that they need a space to grapple with issues: The good, the bad and the otherwise. I don’t think that masculinity normally gets that kind of airtime.”

The Men’s Project is run as an internship program that requires ten hours a week from its interns in exchange for three academic credits per semester, Millay said. These hours consist of a team business meeting as well as a critical discussion of current issues within pop culture. The interns also participate in separate projects. In the spring semester, they participated in the planning of Take Back the Night and the development of the curriculum for “The MENS Workshop,” a judicial sanction through the Dean of Student’s Office.

“We hope to develop this program further so that it is also a leadership class that students can take — not just because they have been sanctioned to it, but because they are interested in these topics and want a space to explore them further in a positive and supportive setting,” Millay said.

Michael Webb, a gender and women’s studies senior, is one of the founding interns of the Men’s Project, which he defines as a “program that questions aspects of college male culture and perceptions of masculinity.” Webb said specific questions the organization strives to answer and address include, “What kind of gender stereotypes are in place in our society? What boxes are we putting people in, in terms of the range of expression that we are able to embody in our day-to-day life?”

Webb’s passion for these topics made for a successful first semester for the internship, and now, Millay said she is confident that Alex Karaman, a graduate student working toward his Ph.D. in gender and women’s studies, will continue to improve The Men’s Project as the graduate assistant for the 2013 fall semester.

Karaman was a political science student at Cal State University at Long Beach when he took his first women’s studies course.

He said “the perspective that the course offered on relations between people … was so much more in line with how he had viewed the world,” and he quickly added gender and women’s studies as a second major as a result.

As an undergraduate student, Karaman said he was involved in campus politics and often addressed issues relating to college rape culture and sexual violence. He said when he saw there was an opportunity for this kind of work to take place on the UA campus, he jumped at it.

Although he has new ideas for the fall semester, Karaman said that there have already been great strides made to make The Men’s Project a very “legitimate and central part of the university structure.” He said his goal is to continue these successful services.

For example, Karaman said The Men’s Project will continue to hold “The Men’s Workshop” a few times a semester that will be mandatory for students who are repeat offenders of the Code of Conduct — more specifically, those who have broken rules that seem to indicate the influence of college male culture, such as “issues of violence” or “sexual assault.”

“Our purpose is largely to show that there are men that are actively engaged in trying to change this rape culture,” Karaman said. “I want programming to be made available that is proactive rather than reactive.”

Debunking Stereotypes - What Men Want When It Comes to Sex and Relationships

The stereotype of young men, college-age men, is that all they want is sex, sex, and some sex. In this view, they are not interested in a relationship - having a girlfriend - or even sleeping with the same woman more than a couple of times.

Annemarie van Oosten, writing for United Academics magazine, summarized a 2009 study of college age men and their thoughts about "hooking up". Here are some of the findings:

Epstein and colleagues found that non-relational, no-strings-attached sex was rare among college men, as was the phenomenon of ‘friends with benefits’. When men hook up, it is often with someone they have emotional connections with or used to be in a relationship with, or they hook up with the same person consistently, relating hooking up to dating. Some men engaged in hookups but struggled to remain detached, or they used the term hookup to describe sexual encounters at the beginning or ending stages of dating. When men call their sexual encounters hookups, it is often to save face when rejected, and when the sexual encounters did not turn into a relationship. Some men even regretted hookups (Epstein et al., 2009).

This is not the stereotype of the sex-crazed college guy (which is not to say that those guys don't exist, but they are more likely to be found in fraternities, where the group pressure toward that type of behavior is intense).

What Men Want when It Comes to Sex and Relationships

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Annemarie van Oosten

In my previous blogs I have mainly discussed casual sex and the hookup culture from a female perspective. But how do men feel about hooking up? It’s easy to rely on stereotypes: “Men are only out to have casual sex, they do not want commitment. They are only in relationships because girls want to.” But how true is this stereotype?

Marina Epstein, Jerel Calzo, Andrew Smiler, and Monique Ward (2009) interviewed 19 college-age men about how they defined and enacted sexual scripts of ‘‘hooking up’’ and ‘‘friends with benefits.” Their study is inspired by previous research that has shown that only a minority of men actually enjoy hooking up, and that the goal of having sex with ‘no strings attached’ is often difficult for men to achieve. Some men set out to have sex without emotional commitment, but end up experiencing emotional vulnerability and a desire for a romantic connection. Men may thus seek and enjoy close emotional ties with their sexual partners as much as women.

In their study, Epstein and colleagues found that non-relational, no-strings-attached sex was rare among college men, as was the phenomenon of ‘friends with benefits’. When men hook up, it is often with someone they have emotional connections with or used to be in a relationship with, or they hook up with the same person consistently, relating hooking up to dating. Some men engaged in hookups but struggled to remain detached, or they used the term hookup to describe sexual encounters at the beginning or ending stages of dating. When men call their sexual encounters hookups, it is often to save face when rejected, and when the sexual encounters did not turn into a relationship. Some men even regretted hookups (Epstein et al., 2009).

Thus, for men, hookups are not always simply casual. It seems that just as women have to negotiate between societal standards of sexual behavior and their own needs and desires, men too have to negotiate the pressure to conform to traditional masculine norms with their need to form meaningful romantic relationships (Epstein et al., 2009). Of course, not all men are the same, and there is a lot of variation in what men expect from sexual encounters. However, it could be that this variation within men is bigger than the variation between men and women. Overall, men and women may not differ much in what they want when it comes to sex and relationships.

Full Citation:
Epstein, M., Calzo, J., Smiler, A., & Ward, L. (2009). “Anything From Making Out to Having Sex”: Men’s Negotiations of Hooking Up and Friends With Benefits Scripts. Journal of Sex Research, 46 (5), 414-424. DOI: 10.1080/00224490902775801

The fourth installment of the Conference on College Men is now accepting proposals for talks, with a March 27 deadline. The Conference is scheduled for May 19-21, 2013 at Miami University of Ohio.

Sponsors include NASPA, ACPA, Men and Masculinities Knowledge Community, and Standing Committee for Men.

2013 Conference on College Men

Call for programs is now open! Submit here!

Conference Dates: May 19-21, 2013

Miami University of Ohio

Program Home | Registration and Fees | Conference Schedule
Call for Programs | Hotel and Travel | Featured Speakers

Submit Proposal

• Program Submission Deadline: March 27, 2013
• Notification of Submission Status: April 5, 2013

The Conference Committee encourages the submission of innovative proposals that connect theory and practice around college men and masculinities, and consider the following issues:

• Best Practices and Innovative Connections.
  This area will explore the ways in which college student practitioners implement programs and interventions designed specifically around gender and masculinities programs and services. Evidence-based approaches to blend theoretical perspectives and research demonstrating positive student outcomes are particularly welcomed.
• Intersectional Perspectives on Men and Masculinities.
  This area will explore how race/ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, [dis]ability, socioeconomic status, and other facets of identity influence college men’s construction, negotiation, and performance of gender.
• Moving from Deficit Models to Appreciative Inquiry.
  This area will explore moving away from deficit models around college men, such as focusing on the “crises” of college men to instead focus on appreciative inquiry. Appreciative inquiry includes work that aims to learn from high-achieving, successful college men in order to leverage and replicate ways of meeting other college men’s needs.
• Situating Theory and History.
  This area will explore the historical and theoretical foundations of work related to college men and masculinities. Connected with feminist theory and gender studies, work in this area highlights the journey of men and masculinity studies within the context of higher education.
• Pressing Needs and Concerns.
  This area will explore opportunities to respond to the specific needs of college men, including mental health concerns, violence prevention, and other contemporary matters within the context of higher education for college-aged men.

Bringing together the most diverse and talented educators in the field of men and masculinities research and practice, the Conference on College Men has become the premier venue to explore and examine issues related to men and masculinities in higher education. As particular populations of college men continue to struggle in their post-secondary transitions and engagement, the Conference on College Men challenges attendees to critically reflect upon how their own identification and expression of gender influences their work with college and university students while also treating them to the most recent scholarship and services in the field.

Audience

• Student Affairs, administrators of all levels, including senior student affairs officers
• Faculty

Conference History
The concept of a professional conference for student affairs administrators focusing on the topic of college men was shepherded within NASPA and ACPA by Dr. Jason Laker, then vice-principal and dean of student affairs at Queen's University in Ontario and founding chair of the NASPA Men and Masculinities Knowledge Community. The inaugural conference, then titled the Institute on College Males, was hosted by Morehouse College in May 2007. The institute theme was Creating and Achieving Successful Outcomes. The institute included an opening keynote delivered by Dr. Michael Kimmel, SUNY Stony Brook, a general session from Dr. Jason Laker, 15 educational sessions, a panel of scholars and practitioners regarding working with college men, and a closing keynote from Dr. Shaun Harper, University of Pennsylvania.

The success of this first institute led NASPA and ACPA to collaborate on a second program in May 2009 hosted by the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Frank Harris, San Diego State University, chaired a planning team composed of both NASPA and ACPA members in selecting major speakers and program proposals. The team decided to officially change the name of the program to the Conference on College Men to more accurately reflect the program structure. The conference theme in 2009 was Engaging College Men: Bridging Scholarship and Practice. The committee selected accepted 20 educational sessions speaking to this theme and focusing on the topics of intersections of identity; recruitment and retention of men; building networks of support for men; facilitating cross-cultural dialogue between men and women; and men at community colleges. The conference featured an opening keynote address from Dr. Linda Sax, UCLA; a panel of Women's Center Directors moderated by Rachel Wagner, University of Dayton; and a closing keynote address from Dr. Shaun Harper, University of Pennsylvania.

The third Conference on College Men took place May 22-24, 2011 at Indiana University Purdue University-Indianapolis. Dr. Jason Laker, now Vice President for Student Affairs at San Jose State University, and Dr. Tracy Davis, Professor and College Student Personnel Program Coordinator Educational and Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Illinois University graciously gave permission to share the title and borrow from the framework of their publication, Masculinities in Higher Education, in planning for the conference program structure.

The conference offered 20 educational sessions exploring theoretical and historical foundations of men and masculinities in higher education, intersections of identities, and practical considerations and effective interventions. The conference included an opening workshop exploring a shared language for men and masculinities facilitated by Rachel Wagner and Z Nicolazzo, University of Arizona, a keynote by Dr. Frank Harris and a keynote by Dr. Susan Marine, Harvard College. The conference closed with a panel facilitated by Dr. Jason Laker and featuring comments from Dr. Tracy Davis, Rachel Wagner, Dr. Shaun Harper, and Dr. Susan Marine.