White House announces college-campus sexual assault awareness campaign

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden announced a sexual assault awareness campaign Friday that aims to promote bystander education on college campuses and engage more men in preventing sexual violence.

Components of the campaign, called “It’s On Us,” include tips on ending sexual assault and victim-blaming as well as an online pledge to not stand by in situations that may lead to sexual assault. Additionally, student leaders at college campuses nationwide, including UC Berkeley, and organizations such as the NCAA and Viacom have publicly partnered with the campaign.

“It’s On Us” represents an effort to facilitate change around the culture of sexual assault, according to UC Berkeley senior Sofie Karasek, a sexual assault survivor who co-founded End Rape on Campus, a survivor advocacy organization.

“They are intentionally trying to change the culture of men accepting that other men commit sexual violence,” Karasek said. “What’s different about this campaign is that it’s so much more comprehensive.”

The campaign utilizes a variety of social media to promote awareness: those who have taken the online pledge can change their Facebook profile pictures to support the campaign, and a public service announcement featuring celebrities was released Thursday. The NCAA plans to show the PSA at its championship events and publicize the campaign on social media.

The campaign’s focus on education signals a positive shift in treating sexual assault prevention as a collective effort, said Kevin Sabo, director of legislative affairs in the ASUC external affairs vice president’s office.

ASUC Student Advocate Rishi Ahuja called the campaign the “philosophical framework” of a new approach to sexual assault prevention.

Additionally, Ahuja, whose role on campus includes providing resources for sexual assault survivors, said the decision to target men was significant.

“When you’re trying to make a culture shift,” Ahuja said, “you have to utilize every mechanism you have to get the word out.”

UC Berkeley junior Meghan Warner, chair of the ASUC Sexual Assault Commission, lauded the campaign’s efforts to shift the dialogue from victim-blaming to a focus on active bystandership.

Although she said the ASUC will look to incorporate aspects and ideas of “It’s On Us,” focusing on the Cal Consent Campaign and other existing student activism on campus comes first.

“I am a very big proponent of student activism,” Warner said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with this campaign, but why would we take government activism when we already have this student activism that’s already in existence?”

According to UC spokesperson Brooke Converse, the university is still deciding how to engage in “It’s On Us” and integrate it alongside systemwide efforts such as UConsent, the University of California Student Association’s sexual assault awareness campaign.

Karasek applauded the campaign’s partnership with companies such as Electronic Arts, a video game developer that has made games such as the “Sims” and “Battlefield.” The company agreed to incorporate “It’s On Us” into the promotion of its brand, taking a step in reaching out to a male-dominated culture that might lack awareness of sexual assault, according to Karasek.

Along with the campaign announcement, a White House task force posted three documents on its website that provide sample language and recommendations for campus policy surrounding sexual assault.

The task force, created in January, released a report in April about ways for colleges and universities to respond to and reduce cases of sexual assault.

UC Berkeley, which is currently under investigation by the federal government for possible violations of federal law regarding the handling of sexual violence cases, is taking its own steps toward sexual assault awareness. The campus released a resource website for survivors in April and revamped sexual assault prevention training for incoming students.

At Wednesday’s UC Board of Regents meeting, Chancellor Nicholas Dirks announced that those who do not complete the mandatory orientation on sexual violence — numbering about 500 students — will have their registration blocked.

According to Ahuja, the ASUC Student Advocate’s Office just finished the hiring process for a confidential survivor advocate, who will help the campus coordinate a student-focused response to sexual assault.

Taking the conversation to the national level, though, ultimately leads to a greater scale of awareness, Sabo said.

“I’m excited that there’s now a national dialogue talking about what we can all do — not just women, but people of all gender identities,” Warner said.

Contact Katy Abbott at kabbott@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @katyeabbott.

via: http://www.dailycal.org/2014/09/19/white-house-announces-campus-sexual-assault-awareness-campaign/

Cop widow becomes unlikely public face for Proposition 47

The policeman's widow stood in the Oakland courtroom and poured out her broken heart.

She told the jury about a young daughter who would never see her daddy again, a teenage boy who lost his father figure, a wife stripped of her soul mate. She begged that the convicted killer, whom she branded a "beast," be given the death penalty so he could "burn in hell." After the tears had been wiped away, the jury agreed with Dionne Wilson, sentencing to death the man who shot San Leandro Officer Dan Niemi seven times during a routine stop.

But the 2007 verdict didn't bring the mother of two, who met Niemi while working in a South Bay gun shop, peace of mind. Consumed with rage, Wilson clung even more fiercely to the belief that the law should crack down hard on all offenders -- even on someone who just steals "a Popsicle."

When she could no longer live with her anger, the police widow underwent a spiritual journey that's led to an unlikely outcome. Nine years after her husband was gunned down, Wilson has become the public face for a sentence-reduction initiative on the November ballot that she once would have scorned as the work of "mentally ill liberals." Proposition 47 would require misdemeanor sentences rather than longer felony sentences for six crimes, including petty theft under $950.

"Dan would probably say, 'Who are you and what have you done with my wife?' " Wilson, 45, said of her new outlook. "But we need to think about where this whole cycle of crime started. If we can get in front of it, maybe there won't be a person on the other end who is killing a police officer like Dan."

Wilson joins a growing chorus of tough-on-crime advocates from across the country who now agree with social justice champions on the left that the prison-only approach for nonviolent offenders is failing, and that there are more efficient uses of taxpayer dollars to make communities safer.

Last year, 35 states passed less-restrictive laws, including conservative Mississippi and Alabama. The year before, Californians voted overwhelmingly to ease the state's Three Strikes Law, then the toughest in the nation. And in a landmark decision earlier this year, the bipartisan U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to reduce lengthy sentences for most federal drug offenders and make thousands of current inmates eligible for resentencing under the new guidelines.

Proposition 47 itself has netted another unexpected champion. Conservative Christian Republican and Public Storage founder B. Wayne Hughes Jr. has contributed $750,000 so far, with plans to spend $5 million.

"This is a situation where the walls of partisanship ought to come down immediately," the millionaire wrote in the ballot statement.

But other crime victims with tragic tales similar to Wilson's disagree. Three victims groups oppose the measure, including the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, which objects that it would make possession of date-rape drugs and other narcotics an automatic misdemeanor. Misdemeanors carry lighter sentences than felonies, often just probation or short stints in jail.

The initiative also has drawn serious opposition from law enforcement -- including associations of district attorneys, sheriffs and police -- and from groups of retailers and grocers, who contend that property crime would increase. So far, only former San Diego and San Jose police Chief Bill Landsdowne and two California district attorneys have come out in support -- George Gascon in San Francisco and Paul Gallegos in Humboldt County.

"Someone can commit petty theft 10,000 times," San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said, "and we'd still have to always charge it as a misdemeanor." Also under Proposition 47, Wagstaffe noted, about 10,000 nonviolent inmates in overflowing jails and prisons would be eligible to apply for early release.

Proponents say that's exactly the point. The hundreds of millions dollars that the secretary of state's office estimates would have been spent annually to house prison inmates would instead go to education, mental health and drug treatment programs, and victims assistance.

Such leniency once would have been unthinkable for Wilson.

From the moment she heard the knock on the door in the middle of that awful night at her Milpitas home, and saw three police officers crying, the pain was unrelenting.

After the single mother and Niemi had met in the gun shop, they had never been apart. Married in 1999, they had a daughter, Jordan, and Niemi became close to her son, Josh Hewett.

"It was just one of those fairy-tale love stories," said Wilson, sitting in her Morgan Hill home.

But her sense of safety was shattered and her life became a blur of grief on July 25, 2005. Niemi, 42, who had become a policeman just three years earlier, was shot to death by Irving Ramirez, 23, while responding to a noise complaint. Carrying two handguns and some drugs, Ramirez was on probation and didn't want to go back to jail.

Wilson had hoped the death verdict two years later would start a healing process. In her case, it didn't. Even as she remarried, "moving on" eluded her.

She suffered health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder. She drank, favoring appletinis. She tried, and failed, to distract herself, buying things such as technology gadgets and a succession of nine horses.

"Everything was an outward expression of my hate toward Irving and anybody who had ever committed a crime," Wilson said.

Seeking to quiet her roiling mind, she began a "mad quest" of spiritual teachings that brought her to meditation and Buddhism, finding comfort in the concepts of compassion and overcoming suffering.

At some point, she was stunned to realize that she no longer hated the man who had torn apart her family's life. In 2010, she drafted a letter to Ramirez, writing that she regretted making him seem "less than human" at the trial. She no longer supports the death penalty.

"I'm really proud of her to be able to get through the difficult times and be able to forgive," said her son, Hewett, 24, who was close to his stepfather. "I'm pretty sure some people disapprove, but they also don't understand how hard this has been on her and what it's taken for her to get to this point."

Now, she is on the board of the Insight Prison Project, a restorative justice agency based in San Rafael, which tries to find something redemptive even in society's worst as they accept accountability for what they have done. Wilson also is the survivor outreach coordinator for Californians for Safety and Justice, Proposition 47's sponsor, meeting with crime survivors across the state and helping them put their lives back together.

The state remains under enormous pressure to comply with a federal court order and reduce prison overcrowding. And Wilson sees Proposition 47 as another step toward a smarter criminal justice system that would prevent more families from going through what hers has endured.

"I want to get ahead of crime instead of just playing cleanup," Wilson said. "Instead of calling the coroner, let's get into the schools and invest in the families and communities who are filling the prisons. Isn't that what this whole public safety discussion is about?"

Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482. Follow her at Twitter.com/tkaplanreport.

Plans for the savings

Under a fixed formula, hundreds of millions of dollars a year that would have been spent annually to house prison inmates will be reallocated.65 percent -- to the Board of State and Community Corrections for mental and drug treatment programs and diversion programs
25 percent -- to K-12 education, for programs aimed at helping at-risk kids
10 percent -- to Victims Compensation Fund, for grief and mental health counseling, and relocation

Mental health prevention a wise investment

Unlike any other state in the nation, California voters asked for an investment in mental health prevention and early intervention strategies when they passed Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act, in 2004. So when the news media fails to present these evidence-based programs as legitimate investments, it demonstrates that this influential industry is out of touch with what Californians want, which is to give our state a chance to save lives.

Critics who dismiss efforts to eliminate the stigma associated with mental health challenges ignore the facts: Intervening at the first sign of symptoms offers the best opportunity to make a significant, positive difference in both immediate and long-term outcomes for people affected by mental health issues.

Yet studies show fewer than 30 percent of people with mental health challenges seek treatment. Fear of being labeled with a mental illness is a significant barrier that prevents people from seeking help.

Far from being just "feel good" programs as some contend, stigma reduction efforts can save lives. In fact, the U.S. surgeon general has identified reducing the stigma associated with mental illness and treatment as a key priority for the nation in addressing the public health crisis of suicide.

Of the individuals who die by suicide, 90 percent have a diagnosable mental health disorder. Too few connect with services that can change the course of their lives. On average, nine Californians die by suicide each day.

Prop. 63 enables California to make a significant difference on a statewide scale to improve awareness of the risks and behaviors associated with suicide and to equip friends and family members to connect loved ones with help. Reaching college students with mental health prevention and early intervention strategies is one part of Prop. 63's multipronged approach.

A multilayered, statewide stigma-reduction program challenges the negative stereotypes and discrimination - too often perpetuated by the news and entertainment media - which prevent people from accessing the mental health services they need.

Having nearly died of suicide as a college student, I know firsthand these proven strategies are worth California's investment.

As required by the law, the vast majority of Prop. 63 dollars are spent on delivering successful, innovative community mental health services to those with severe illness. At the same time, voters recognized prevention and early intervention strategies are so important that the law sets aside 20 percent of funding to prevent more people from reaching mental health crisis.

Any doctor will tell you that preventing heart disease is a better solution than waiting until the first heart attack. The same prescription applies here: Prop. 63's prevention and early intervention efforts meet California voters' demand to improve and save more lives.

Kevin Hines is a national mental health advocate and author of "Memoir: The Art of Living Mentally Well - Most Days - the Kevin Hines story."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Mental-health-prevention-a-wise-investment-4028399.php#ixzz2C2YurpFd