Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment
Highlighting PAVE: a student organization dedicated to preventing violence on campus through education and activism
By Jessica Katz, Online Editor
For more information on PAVE, check out their website or Instagram. Special thanks to Jessica Melnik, Alyssa Bokotey, Dani Rosen, Ndemazea Fonkem and Laura Hametta for supporting me in writing this piece.
TW: Sexual assault
About one-fourth of University of Wisconsin-Madison women experience some form of unwanted sexual contact during their time on campus (Cantor et al., 2019). In the 2019-2020 school year, UW’s Title IX office received 324 formal reports, though students and experts estimate thousands more cases go unreported on campus. BIPOC students, students with disabilities and students who identify as LGBTQIA+ are disproportionately impacted by sexual violence.
Despite the prevalence of sexual violence on campus, there have been no significant improvements in lowering the rate of sexual violence over time or working toward prevention initiatives. Only 43.1% of UW students are aware of survivor services and 43.5% are aware of Title IX. Most disturbingly, there is only one survivor advocate for 40,000+ students (Cantor et al., 2019).
Preventing Awareness Victim Empowerment (PAVE-UW) is a student organization working toward improving these causes, stating on its website that the group is, “dedicated to preventing sexual assault, dating violence and stalking through education and activism” (About | Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment, n.d.). Although the organization is advised by UHS Prevention Staff, every member is an undergraduate or graduate student.
Volunteer Coordinator Alyssa Bokotey is grateful for PAVE-UW but said the organization is doing work to prevent violence on campus and in our community that should have already been done in the first place.
“[PAVE] is an organization doing work that shouldn’t have to be done and shouldn’t have to be done by students either,” Bokotey said. “It should not be on us to prevent the violence that we are experiencing, yet the university is not doing enough, the city is not doing enough, the state is not doing enough, our country is not doing enough. So we have to pick up the slack.”
Education
According to PAVE Chair Jessica Melnik, “We have workshops that we do for different student organizations or different classes that are focused on deconstructing rape culture, how to best support a survivor if they disclose to you or just general workshops introducing people to the concept of power-based violence and anti-oppression work.”
Interactive peer education workshops highlight topics such as allyship, healthy vs. unhealthy relationships, men’s engagement and deconstructing rape culture (Workshops | Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment, n.d.). The main part of Bokotey’s role is to prepare a group of volunteers to lead these workshops.
Volunteers spent first semester meeting at least once a week to build content knowledge about the kind of work PAVE does. According to Bokotey, “This work is difficult and you’re not going to feel comfortable working with other people to achieve the goals that you have in preventing violence on our campus if you don’t know them that well.”
Education plays a large role in both awareness and prevention. This semester, Bokotey said volunteers are discussing more difficult questions: What does violence look like? Why does it look like that? What do we picture violence as? What power do we hold? What power do we not hold? What can we actually do? What do we want our campus to look like, and how are we going to work towards that?
“Everyone here has their own experience with violence, but the reason I wanted to get involved in this capacity is because I saw a real niche on campus for students to actually create change,” Bokotey explained. “I wanted to be an educator so not only would I get involved in violence prevention work, but I was also able to equip other people with the skills to engage in that work themselves and teach others how to do it, too.”
Support Spaces
PAVE has support spaces in their office located at 333 E Campus Mall, Ste. 3147 every Mon. and Fri. from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., staffed by PAVE staff and volunteers as well as an advocate from the Rape Crisis Center. These are open to anyone seeking advice or support.
If someone is seeking support and resources for a friend, PAVE will walk them through a “support people resource guide” (Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment, n.d.). Or if someone is looking for support and resources for themselves, PAVE will connect them with an advocate and provide them with resources.
Petition to fund Survivor Services
Last fall, PAVE launched a petition on Change.org to fund survivor services at UW in response to a lack of resources available for survivors on campus. With only one survivor advocate, the majority of survivors are put on a waitlist. Advocates provide confidential victim advocacy to students, including referrals, information about survivor rights, accommodations, accompaniments, consultations and assistance related to brief intervention (Survivor Services: Advocacy – University Health Services – UW–Madison, n.d.).
According to Melnik, “[PAVE is] working really hard towards getting funding to survivor services–both mental health advocacy and violence prevention–so that they’re able to increase their capacity and serve students.”
With more funding, Survivor Services could expand its hours of availability, increase crisis support hours and expand office hours to locations across campus. In turn, this would decrease wait time for mental health appointments and help survivors heal.
PAVE hopes the petition–which has over 1,000 signatures so far–will give UW a push. For Melnik, part of this mission means creating a system with more inclusivity. “I think the more options we can give to people and the more support that is available, the better,” Melnik said.
Violence@UW Coalition
Mecha, Wisconsin Black Student Union (WBSU), Wunk Sheek, Club Q and PAVE are working together as the Violence@UW Coalition to address the question, What does violence at UW look like?
Melnik explained, “The Violence@UW campaign is a coalition of organizations that are all impacted by violence in different ways, and we’re hoping to create a visual representation of what violence at UW looks like for different groups individually, but also what that means as a collective.”
Projects Coordinator Ndemazea Fonkem hopes that even if nothing changes policy-wise, survivors feel they not only have a voice, but also a community they can trust and rely on. “We’re working on this project with a lot of culturally-aligned organizations as we acknowledge that anti-oppression movements have very often catered to white women,” Fonkem said. “We’re trying to expand how we work towards anti-violence and how we define violence.”
Focusing on just sexual violence does not properly address sexual violence, as there are many factors that come to play, including race, gender and sexuality. In April, the coalition will gather a variety of students to share how violence has looked for them in the form of a mural.
“[It’s important to] build this coalition around people who are most impacted by the violence and that services are not necessarily made for them,” Melnik said.” I think by centering those voices, we’re hoping to start a new conversation on campus.”
How to get involved
According to Bokotey, “You can get involved in the smallest way or the most involved way.” And she is right—there are a variety of ways to get involved with PAVE.
For those looking for simple ways to get involved, you can attend PAVE’s campaign events (sign up here) or PAVE’s workshops (sign up here). Another easy, yet impactful, way is by signing and sharing PAVE’s petition to fund survivor services.
For those looking to dedicate more time, you can volunteer or join one of PAVE’s programs.
To volunteer with PAVE, fill out this Volunteer Interest Form. Volunteer opportunities for PAVE include office support, staff shadowing, support processing spaces and event outreach.
To join PAVE’s Volunteer Leadership Program (VLP), fill out this VLP Interest Form. In the VLP, volunteers meet weekly and gain direct experience with PAVE’s projects.
Lastly, to join PAVE’s Peer Education Program (PEP), fill out this PEP Interest Form. The PEP provides the training necessary to facilitate PAVE’s General Workshops and is for anyone interested in education about sexual assault prevention (Workshops | Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment, n.d.). In weekly meetings, members learn about sexual violence prevention, facilitation skills and anti-oppression work.
Sources:
Cantor, D., Fisher, B., Chibnail, S., Harps, S., Townsend, R., Thomas, G., Lee, H., Kranz, V., Herbison, R., & Madden, K. (2019, September 16). Report on the AAU Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Misconduct: The University of Wisconsin–Madison. Westat.
About | Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment. (n.d.). PAVE-UW.
Workshops | Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment. (n.d.). PAVE-UW.
Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment. (n.d.). General Volunteer Orientation Presentation.
Workshops | Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment. (n.d.). PAVE-UW.
Survivor Services: Advocacy – University Health Services – UW–Madison. (n.d.). University Health Services.