By Conner Hoyt
The University of Maryland added sexual misconduct training into this summer’s freshmen orientation sessions after multiple campus groups pushed for it last year.
Incoming students who attended the two-day orientation heard a 30-minute presentation on campus safety delivered by University of Maryland Police, according to Orientation Director Gerry Strumpf. Students watched a 10-minute video on sexual assault and bystander intervention, and then discussed the issue in small groups led by orientation advisors.
“It was kind of refreshing to see that UMD was actually trying and not ignoring the problems by sanitizing the issue,” freshman Zewde Ingram said.
Previous orientation sessions did not mention sexual misconduct. Last year, the Residence Hall Association and Student Government Association passed resolutions that urged the university to implement mandatory in-person sexual assault prevention training at orientation, in addition to the already-established online training.
“By doing it in person, you are forcing people to face it head-on,” 2015-16 RHA Vice President Ashley Feng told The Diamondback last year.
Orientation was a great time to introduce students to the resources available to them, said Kevin Webb, training manager at the university’s Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct. Webb’s office put together a short video that was played during the training.
“It’s important to set a baseline for students: a basic understanding of what sexual misconduct is, what their rights and responsibilities are and what are the resources that are available to them,” Webb said.
Sophomore orientation advisor Mia Carmel wrote in an email that many of the freshmen were “impacted by the information and received it very well.”
“Hearing directly from the UMPD and students like the orientation staff is the best way to really understand the risks and concerns at hand and how best to avoid unsafe situations,” the economics major wrote, adding that she doesn’t fully recall online training.
In preparation for the discussion sessions, “orientation advisors were trained by CARE [to Stop Violence],” Strumpf wrote in an email. Strumpf declined to answer follow-up questions about the sexual misconduct training at orientation over the phone.
Freshman biology major Kevin Scranton said he found the program effective because “it brought up information that should be common sense, but obviously isn’t to some people.”
“One in five women in college experience sexual assault or sexual harassment,” he said. “It didn’t strike me how common it actually is.”
Since fall 2014, incoming students have been required to complete an hour-long online sexual misconduct training, though there is no punishment for failure to finish. In future semesters though, Webb anticipates students could face registration blocks for not doing the program.
“We certainly believe that sexual misconduct is a very important thing,” Webb said. “It’s great that students have a context for [how sexual misconduct is handled at the university] when they get to the online training.”
Webb’s office also had the chance to remind students to do the online training during orientation, which he said contributed to the high completion rate — 86 percent.
Last year, as of Sept. 17, 35 percent of students who received emails about the training completed it. That year, the deadline was Oct. 1, while this semester it was due before the first day of classes.
“We got several inquiries from students that missed the email for the online training,” Webb said. “Students were talking about it amongst themselves — they would say, ‘Oh, my roommate or another student mentioned that they had done the training, and I haven’t gotten my email.”
During online training, students watched a video on consent that uses tea as an analogy for sex, which some said resonated with them.
“The tea metaphor did a good job; you’re not going to force feed someone tea,” Ingram said. “That was a good way of putting it into understandable terms.”
