Nikki Baker’s last day as compliance and prevention coordinator was Thursday, July 27. The position will soon be posted on HR’s employment webpage. Leslie Johnson, AVP, student success, is serving as interim compliance and prevention coordinator (includes Title VI & IX coordinator responsibilities) in addition to her normal duties. Faculty, staff and students can contact Leslie at leslie.johnson@llcc.edu or 217-786-2848. Please check out the Faculty Compliance Padlet at https://llcc.padlet.org/nikkibaker1/faculty-compliance-resources-wbsfwp5mcyq9j2va or make a report by going to https://cm.maxient.com/reporting.php?LincolnLandCC.

During this final week of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we focus on how we can help prevent sexual assault and support survivors.

Bystander intervention can keep a bad situation from escalating. Often bystanders do nothing because they are sure “someone” will step up and they aren’t certain how they can be that “someone.”

This short video produced by Prairie Center Against Sexual Assault provides options for protecting everyone’s safety and being the someone who steps up.

A special thank you to the student organizations who helped “Teal Up” the LLCC campus:  Student Radiographers Association, Chemistry Club, IV Leaguers, Black Student Union, Environmental Club, Student Government Association, Phi Theta Kappa, Associate Degree Nursing Beta Nu Honor Society and the Honors Program. And thank you to the Outreach Center locations and the informal employee teams. What a great job!

Additional information and resources on sexual assault are available on LLCC’s website. You may also contact Nikki Baker, compliance and prevention coordinator, at nikki.baker@llcc.edu or 217-786-3426.

During this final week of Sexual Assault Awareness, we focus on how we can help prevent sexual assault and support survivors.

To support loved ones who survive sexual assault, Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) recommends we:

• Believe them. There may be others who will doubt your loved one. Make it clear that you believe what they are telling you.
• Tell them this is not their fault, and they don’t deserve this. Victims often blame themselves for what has happened. There is also a societal tendency to blame victims for what has happened to them. Your loved one needs to hear from you that no matter what they were wearing, drinking or doing, they did not deserve this, nor is it their fault.
• Tell them there are people who want to help. Victims often feel isolated and helpless. Remind them that they are not alone and there are many people and organizations that are qualified and willing to help them through the healing process, whether that involves pressing charges, getting medical care, seeing someone to talk through the trauma, or just exploring their options. See sexual violence resources available to survivors.
• Offer to take the next step to accessing help with them. Making that first step to get help from a professional can be extremely hard. Offering to make the first step with them, whether that is calling a resource center or going to the hospital, make the difference between your loved one accessing help or not.

Additional information and resources on sexual assault are available on LLCC’s website. You may also contact Nikki Baker, compliance and prevention coordinator, at nikki.baker@llcc.edu or 217-786-3426.

During this final week of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we focus on how we can help prevent sexual assault and support survivors.

You can support survivors by participating in Wednesday’s National Denim Day sponsored by SGA and supporting Prairie Center Against Sexual Assault. A minimum $5 donation purchases a jeans day sticker, and donations are now being accepted in the LLCC Student Life office and Outreach Center locations.

According to the Rape. Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the Denim Day story begins in Italy almost 30 years ago, when an 18-year old girl was raped while wearing a pair of denim jeans. At the time of the assault, the perpetrator was arrested and prosecuted, but years later, he appealed the conviction claiming they had consensual sex. The Italian Supreme Court released the perpetrator, asserting that because the survivor was wearing tight jeans, she had to have assisted in their removal, thereby implying consent. Infuriated by the verdict, and the victim blaming that accompanied it, the women in the Italian Parliament came to work the following day wearing denim in order to protest. This protest was the inspiration and catalyst for the first Denim Day, which grew into an American tradition thanks to our friends at Peace Over Violence in Los Angeles.

Now, Denim Day is the longest running sexual violence education campaign in history. For the past 23 years, survivors and supporters alike rally together on a Wednesday in April to stand against victim blaming and protest the misinformation that surrounds sexual violence. The campaign does not simply support survivors who have experienced sexual violence while wearing denim jeans; it reminds everyone that regardless of what you are wearing, consent is never implied.

Additional information and resources on sexual assault are available on LLCC’s website. You may also contact Nikki Baker, compliance and prevention coordinator, at nikki.baker@llcc.edu or 217-786-3426.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

Consent plays an important role in determining when sexual assault occurs.

The “What Were You Wearing?” art exhibit at the United Nations invites observers to see the outfits worn by sexual assault survivors at the time of their attack, confronting and refuting the implicit victim-blaming in that question. It reinforces the awareness that sexual consent must be implicit and cannot be implied through clothing.

Additional information and resources on sexual assault are available on LLCC’s website. You may also contact Nikki Baker, compliance and prevention coordinator, at nikki.baker@llcc.edu or 217-786-3426.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Consent plays an important role in determining when sexual assault occurs. What is consent?

Please join us tomorrow, April 18, at 11:30 a.m. in A. Lincoln Commons to hear Shelley Vaughn from Prairie Center Against Sexual Assault discuss how consent is defined. The event will also be accessible via Teams.

Thank you to everyone who attended and participated in the LLCC community conversation last week.  A special thank you to PCASA for sharing the research and to Dr. Karen Sisk for leading last week’s discussion.

Additional information and resources on sexual assault are available on LLCC’s website. You may also contact Nikki Baker, compliance and prevention coordinator, at nikki.baker@llcc.edu or 217-786-3426.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Throughout this week, we have been focusing on the work research of Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan documented in their book, “Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study on Sex, Power and Sexual Assault” on campus.

In chapter five, “Consent,” Hirsch and Khan share that while students understand and can explain the need for affirmative consent, they can be unaware about consent in their own relations:

In the interviews, to minimize social desirability bias – the fact that research subjects often tell you what they know to be socially desirable, rather than what they actually do – we therefore deliberately asked students to describe a sexual experience in minute detail before asking any questions about consent. Surprisingly, almost no student brought up consent in their initial descriptions of a sexual encounter. Interview subjects were taken aback when they realized, upon being asked to recount their stories a second time, but this time to be explicit about how consent worked, that affirmative consent was not a defining characteristic of their sexual encounters. Some even realized they may not have gotten consent within past sexual interactions – interactions which, until the moment of the interview, they had thought of as consensual. (Kindle version – page 115)

Want to talk more about the research and the authors’ recommendations? Plan on attending an LLCC community discussion led by Dr. Karen Sisk today, April 13, 12:30-1:30 p.m. in A. Lincoln Commons and via Teams. Participants are encouraged to bring their lunches and a smart device to participate in an electronic conversation. Light snacks and water will be provided.

Additional information and resources on sexual assault are available on LLCC’s website. You may also contact Nikki Baker, compliance and prevention coordinator, at nikki.baker@llcc.edu or 217-786-3426.

Throughout this week, we are focusing on the work research of Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan documented in their book, “Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study on Sex, Power and Sexual Assault” on campus.

In chapter four, “What is sex for?” Hirsch and Khan discuss the pursuit and challenges for students to understand and define the distinctions between sexual assault and sex:

Students have a word for this – they describe some sex as being “rapey.” Initially we found this disturbing. Calling something rapey, with raised eyebrow, seemed to be joking about something that was not funny; we wanted, and still want, a bright line between “rape” and “sex.” But the words that students use are a window into their world. When students talked about sex as “rapey,” part of what they were indicating was that they were having sex that they were unwilling to name “assault” but that they recognized as having a lot of similarities to assault. And when students talk about other things as rapey – whether it’s a 1980s classic teen movie like Sixteen Candles, with a scene that borders on date rape; a Disney scene, such as the song sung by Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, where he claims he’ll make Belle his wife, regardless of her objections; or an old jazz standard such as “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” where a man tries to keep a woman from leaving, even as she insists she wants to – what they are flagging is a shift in cultural sensibilities that is part of the emerging contemporary collective acknowledgment of sexual assault as a social problem. (pg 90-91)

Want to talk more about the research and the authors’ recommendations? Plan on attending an LLCC community discussion led by Dr. Karen Sisk tomorrow, April 13, 12:30-1:30 p.m. in A. Lincoln Commons and via Teams. Participants are encouraged to bring their lunches and a smart device to participate in an electronic conversation. Light snacks and water will be provided.

Additional information and resources on sexual assault are available on LLCC’s website. You may also contact Nikki Baker, compliance and prevention coordinator at nikki.baker@llcc.edu or 217-786-3426.

Throughout this week, we are focusing on the work research of Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan documented in their book, “Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study on Sex, Power and Sexual Assault” on campus.

In the prologue of the book, Hirsch and Shamus define their use of the term “sexual citizens,” indicating it:

… denotes the acknowledgment of one’s own right to sexual self-determination, and importantly, recognizes the equivalent right in others. Sexual citizenship isn’t something some are born with and others are born without. Rather, sexual citizenship is fostered, and institutionally and culturally supported …. We mean a socially produced sense of enfranchisement and right to sexual agency.

Sexual citizenship focuses attention on how some people feel entitled to others’ bodies, and others do not feel entitled to their own bodies. As a social goal, promoting sexual citizenship entails creating conditions that promote the capacity for sexual self-determination in all people, enabling them to feel secure, capable, and entitled to enact their sexual projects; and simultaneously insisting that all recognize others’ right to self-determination.” (Kindle version, page xvi)

Want to talk more about the research and the authors’ recommendations? Plan on attending a LLCC community discussion led by Dr. Karen Sisk on Thursday, April 13, 12:30-1:30 p.m. in A. Lincoln Commons and via Teams. Participants are encouraged to bring their lunches and a smart device to participate in an electronic conversation. Light snacks and water will be provided.

Additional information and resources on sexual assault are available on LLCC’s website. You may also contact Nikki Baker, compliance and prevention coordinator, at nikki.baker@llcc.edu or 217-786-3426.