Wilkes University Junior criminology major Lindsay Becker, a victim of sexual assault herself, helped found a chapter of It’s On Us at Wilkes, and helped bring the national program to the campus Monday for four workshops on campus sexual assault awareness and consent, bystander intervention, survivor support and online dating safety.
                                 Mark Guydish | Times Leader

Wilkes University Junior criminology major Lindsay Becker, a victim of sexual assault herself, helped found a chapter of It’s On Us at Wilkes, and helped bring the national program to the campus Monday for four workshops on campus sexual assault awareness and consent, bystander intervention, survivor support and online dating safety.

Mark Guydish | Times Leader

Sexual assault prevention education topic of program

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<p>Tracey Vitchers, executive Director of It’s On Us, gives an introductory talk at the start of all-day sexual assault prevention and education training at Wilkes University Monday. It was part of a ‘national tour’ stopping at Wilkes that will travel across the country providing peer-to-peer workshops to students.</p>
                                 <p>Mark Guydish | Times Leader</p>

Tracey Vitchers, executive Director of It’s On Us, gives an introductory talk at the start of all-day sexual assault prevention and education training at Wilkes University Monday. It was part of a ‘national tour’ stopping at Wilkes that will travel across the country providing peer-to-peer workshops to students.

Mark Guydish | Times Leader

<p>It’s On Us Executive Director Tracey Vitchers talks at the start of a sexual assault awareness and education program at Wilkes University Monday morning.</p>
                                 <p>Mark Guydish | Times Leader</p>

It’s On Us Executive Director Tracey Vitchers talks at the start of a sexual assault awareness and education program at Wilkes University Monday morning.

Mark Guydish | Times Leader

WILKES-BARRE — Tracey Vitchers didn’t get overly political, but she didn’t mince words either.

When it comes to protections implemented by former President Barack Obama against college sexual assault (under the federal Title IX law), Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos “is working to gut Title IX,” she said.

The executive director of the It’s On Us program offered opening remarks at Wilkes University Monday, before students headed off to workshops on sexual assault awareness and prevention available through the day.

Having graduated in 2010, Vitchers said the type of gathering she was helping orchestrate “never would have happened” during her college years because, back then, “sexual assault was not a topic administrators wanted to confront head-on. It was a problem at another school, not their school.”

That changed in 2011 when the Obama administration issued what became known as the “Dear Colleague” letter, spelling out new guidelines in complying with Title IX regarding allegations of sexual assault. The new guidelines required considerably more education and reporting on sexual assault, putting more emphasis on victim rights.

A victim of assault herself, Vitchers became an advocate, working first with Callisto, an organization that built the first secure online sexual assault reporting system for colleges, then joining It’s On Us as the movement gained momentum.

Assault victims often felt “isolated and really alone,” she said, so much so that less than 10 percent of the victims would report the crime. The “Dear Colleague” letter “was the first time it felt like the experience of college assault survivors across the nation really mattered.”

Contending the new rules may be robbing the accused of their rights, Trump — who has been accused of sexual misconduct himself — has been working to issue new guidelines. Near the end of 2018, De Vos issued proposed new guidelines.

“One of the most egregious is changing the definition of what kind of sexual assault our colleges are required to investigate,” she said. “It has to be so ostensibly severe and pervasive and ongoing that it disrupts the student’s education” to warrant investigation.

When the proposed rules were first released and the required 60 days of public comment began, It’s On Us launched a campaign criticizing the rules as a giant step back and urging victims and others to submit comments. The submissions shot up from 1,400 to more than 50,000 in two days, hitting 120,000 submitted comments by the end of the 60 days.

About 120 students registered for up to four different workshops from around 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Wilkes, each workshop about one hour long. The topics were sexual assault awareness and consent education, bystander prevention, survivor support and online dating safety.

Wilkes junior Lindsay Becker, who helped bring the program to Wilkes thanks to a state grant, said she became interested in the issue because she was assaulted herself at age 13 and “I didn’t know it was assault until seven years later.”

Which, she said is part of the reason assault is so under-reported.

“Education is the key to stopping sexual assault,” the criminology major added.

But Vitchers said that, because of changes pushed by the Trump administration, the tour is more than training. “The goal of the national training tour is to send a really clear message,” she said. “If the federal and state and local government will not take actions to protect our nation’s students from sexual violence, we’re going to do it without them.”

When DeVos first discussed rolling back the reporting requirements in 2017, officials from area colleges and universities told the Times Leader that, while they would comply with any legal requirements, they had no interest in reducing efforts in place to reduce assaults and make reporting them easier for victims.

Vitchers said Pennsylvania is doing better than other states because Gov. Tom Wolf launched a statewide It’s On Us campaign backed by grant money for schools to continue training programs and a package of seven laws to codify the efforts even if the federal government does change the guidance. Two of those laws have already been passed, she added.

Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish