Rochelle Robinson has been hired by the college as the new Violence Prevention Educator in part of the effort to reduce sexual assault and dating violence at Le Moyne.

According to the Campus Security Report, there are 10 sex offenses in 2015, seven in 2016 and three in 2017. As Violence Prevention Educator or project coordinator, Robinson’s goal is to keep numbers low by facilitating and improving programs and strategies in sexual assault prevention.

Robinson officially became a member of the Le Moyne community in February after the school was awarded a $300,000 grant from the Office of Violence Against Women.

“I was hired to coordinate this grant, and to be able to execute the vision of the grant and to manage all of its moving parts,” Robinson said. “The vision for this position on campus is to be able to ultimately move in the direction of a culture shift.”

The grant is made up of three parts and has a timeline of three years.

“There a prevention piece, there’s a law enforcement and security piece and there’s a judicial piece,” said the Director of Security, Mark Perretti. “Right now we’re in the final stages of coming up with what our strategic plan for this grant will look like.”

“We hired Rochelle as the Violence Prevention Educator in the hope that she will bring new things here,” said the Title IV Coordinator at Le Moyne, Deb Melzer, who is the campus administrator responsible for handling student-related sexual misconduct. “We just had a trainer on campus for the MVP (Male Violence Prevention) Program and we will be bringing that to campus.”

The MVP Program is just one part of the changes that will be coming to Le Moyne.

“What we want to do here is establish a bystander prevention program for the whole campus, as well as a violence prevention program,” Robinson said. “We have decided on a program to use, called Mentors and Violence Prevention.”

“We also have a Coordinated Community Response Team, a group of people who work on campus, and we meet monthly to go over how are we doing with the plan we have in place, and what are the things we have accomplished so far,” said Robinson.

Robinson’s team have also made changes to the student orientation program, Relationships 101. These changes include a new skit about stalking, speeches from administers on campus about their roles and making the training more interactive overall. “Year 1 is a big planning year. And since it’s a planning year there isn’t a lot of tangible work that’s happened yet,” Robinson said. “But we will definitely see some of that work within the next few months.”

The ultimate goal of the grant is to make sure that the policies and procedures created and in place are inviting to everyone to create an inclusive and safe campus environment.

“We want to prevent these things from happening, but, of course, they do happen,” Robinson said. “So we must ask ourselves, are being the most effective with our response here on campus? And our policies gonna work for everyone?”

Rochelle Robinson (left), Violence Prevention Educator, talks with Lisa Morgan (right), Assistant Director for Scheduling & Events, in Robinson’s office located on the second floor of the Campus Center.