Things we don’t like to talk about…

We want to incentivize talking about them.

CNN has been hosting an article for weeks, about sexual assault and how to stop rape on a college campus. We shout out to CNN for keeping that article posted for over a week. What we really want to shout out for though, is the argument in the article. The say, the key to stopping this, is student led activism.

We agree with CNN that student led activism can change this. We believe it can change anything. That’s because we believe that students are change agents. Universities are not change agents, they are simply environments. One of the biggest role a university can play is to steer its environment, but change is begins and ends with the student.

Colleges have gotten the conversations going. Federal Clery Act requirements force the numbers to be published. Universities offer space and funding to groups to speak up on issues important to them. However, at the end, the typical college and university can create and facilitate conversation, but they can’t have it.

Take Back the Night is an event where college students get together and talk about the trend of sexual assault, specifically survivors tell others. They talk about a subject no-one wants to talk about. They say however, if you attend that event, you will be 1000x less likely to be in ‘that’ situation. So, we just need three things…

1. Your event needs to be student run. See the above example, does that work if it was only administrators speaking to students?
2. Marketing needs to be peer based. The University can facilitate change, but it can’t lead it. Students need to market to other students. Students need advertise in a manner that lends an event credibility, with their name. Students want to go to student led and student attended events.
3. Sometimes conversations like this just suck. They are hard, and they need to be backed up with capital. This is where the facilitation comes in. We don’t want to see universities market the event or run the event, we want to see the university show their support and put some money (or incentive behind it) and show people how much they care. This is like a parent going to see their kids perform.

Campus Recess has founded our model on the same thing. We believe that events and engagement can start the worst trends and start the best ones. We believe that you do that through quantifying events, and recognizing, some are things we really don’t like to talk about, we believe those deserve extra points.

Campus Recess believes you reward the students who do talk about it, not just by being there, but by telling others to be there. Peer to peer marketing creates virality.

Campus Recess believes engagement can do anything! Thanks CNN for backing us up on that one.