Michigan Gave Colleges $500,000 to Fight Sex Assault. Here’s How They Spent It.

Last year Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan announced a new grant program aimed at preventing sexual assault on the state’s college campuses. More than 30 institutions applied, and a mix of private, public, and community colleges — 22 in total — received a slice of the pie.

A year and $500,000 later, we checked back in with some of the institutions that won grants to see how they spent the money. Some created or expanded bystander-intervention training, consent education, or awareness campaigns. The awards weren’t huge, and most of the programs that received funding are just one piece of their institutions’ strategies to prevent sexual violence. But the goals were innovation and outreach: The state gave special consideration to new approaches that brought together disparate members of the campus and community.

The programs undertaken by Michigan’s colleges reflect continuing trends that “are shifting away from putting the onus on the victims,” said S. Daniel Carter, an independent campus-security consultant. Ideal assault-prevention programs start with a campus-climate survey or self-assessment and then follow the science, he said.

The long-term impact of the programs won’t be felt for some time. But the efforts show how grants can give some institutions the boost they need to try something different.

“I don’t know of a single college program that would not benefit from more funding,” said Kevin Carmody, Title IX coordinator at Ferris State University, which spent its share of the grant money on social media to educate students about consent. “A lot of the money we have through our regular budget goes toward the tried-and-true programs that we have a feeling are going to work. This additional fund allows us to say, But what else can we do?”

Here’s a look at how three colleges answered that question.

Grand Rapids Community College

The challenges Grand Rapids Community College faces in preventing campus sexual assault are different from those at four-year colleges. But Kimberly DeVries found that most of the available resources and national training programs are geared toward the four-year experience.

Ms. DeVries, director of equal-opportunity compliance at Grand Rapids, used the $7,716 her institution received to fill that resource gap by creating a statewide community-college consortium and organizing summits with officials from other Michigan community colleges.

Ms. DeVries said the goal of the summits was to answer one question: What are other community colleges doing to prevent campus sexual assault? Officials from the campuses in the consortium gathered three times over the last 10 months to receive training and share ideas.

“What we wanted was to get people from as many parts of campus — who either do this work or need to do this work or need to know about this Title IX work — to be at a table together and talking about what we are doing,” she said.

Grand Rapids doesn’t have a resource center, so Ms. DeVries acts as a “one-stop shop” for Title IX coordination and assault prevention. She encounters different issues from those at four-year colleges because of the different ages, backgrounds, and experiences of the students at Grand Rapids. More of them are victims of domestic violence than at some other institutions, Ms. DeVries said, and she refers a “fair amount” of students to shelters.

They’re “not your 18-year-old college student away from home for the first time,” she said. The average age of students at the college last year was 24.

The third summit focused on bystander intervention, a topic on which Grand Rapids hasn’t held much consistent programming. Ms. DeVries said she plans to change that and focus more on prevention rather than the response.

Finlandia University

Finlandia University, a tiny liberal-arts college on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, recently added a football team, tilting the institution’s demographic scale toward men.

Thus Erin Barnett, director of academic success and student life at Finlandia, said the university used its $15,000 grant to start a program designed to engage male students. She brought in a Washington, D.C.-based organization called Men Can Stop Rape for two two-day seminars. Faculty, staff, and students attended the sessions.

Since Finlandia has only about 500 students, the presenters from Men Can Stop Rape were able to meet with more than half the campus community, Ms. Barnett said.

She hopes the trainings will make the residence halls a safe environment and help “young men realize that rape isn’t just a female issue, and that men can partner and empower one another to be advocates for women.”

The grant dollars also went toward a campus-climate survey and purchasing 1,500 drink coasters that change colors in the presence of date-rape drugs. All you need to do is put a drop of the drink on a designated area of the coaster.

Ms. Barnett acknowledged that alcohol is the “No. 1 date-rape drug,” so the coasters are an awareness tool as well.

“If just having a coaster in the young lady’s purse makes her think about how much alcohol she’s consuming or to keep an eye on her drink as opposed to testing for one of the drugs, then we’ve done our jobs.”

Eastern Michigan University

Ellen Gold, assistant vice president for student well-being at Eastern Michigan University, looked at the data from a campus-climate survey and saw that students didn’t know where to report incidents of sexual violence. Many thought reporting meant going straight to the police.

Eastern Michigan received $50,000 to embark on a multifaceted campaign aimed at educating students about reporting assaults and making resources available to survivors.

The first phase was a marketing campaign revolving around the theme “I Choose.” The campaign included a video and a series of posters that feature Eastern Michigan students making statements such as “I choose to get consent” and “I choose to believe a survivor.”

For Ms. Gold, it was key that the materials feature people from the campus. “It’s not something canned that I bought somewhere,” she said.

She said the posters and video promote a positive image, especially for students recovering from a sexual assault, so they won’t feel alienated and isolated.

The marketing campaign is just one way Eastern Michigan used its funding, the second-highest amount awarded to an institution through the grant program. University officials also made a survivor handbook and wallet cards designed to educate students about available campus resources. Faculty and staff were given packets describing their obligations under Title IX and how to report possible incidents of sexual assault or harassment. “We want our faculty and staff to be armed with good, accurate information,” Ms. Gold said.

Reporting is up at Eastern Michigan, she said, but it’s too early to tell if that’s a result of the campaign. She said the university plans to conduct another campus-climate survey in the coming year.

“It would be silly to think we could get it all done in one year or with one program,” she said.

Correction (10/14/2016, 11:54 a.m.): This article originally misspelled Erin Barnett’s surname as “Burnett.” It has been corrected.