April is known for sexual assault awareness, and the University is completing its fifth year of Cougar Consent Week to help educate and inform.
Dana Pavlick Dean of Students, started Cougar Consent Week to help students interact with each other with kindness during a vulnerable time such as Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
“In my previous position of Student Wellness and Conduct, I was in a supportive role and heard how people were interacting with each other, and so I really wanted to make sure that we hit home the importance of respecting each other and ourselves,” Pavlick said.
Cougar Consent Week also serves as a refresher for freshman students who have taken the PATCH program, which everyone goes through as a first-year student to learn about about assault and incidences.
Pavlick said she is also proud of Promoting Healthy Relationships Through Education and Empowerment (PHREE) that provided interactive and fun activities to increase learning.
“Our PHREE group has come up with some amazing activities that are also educational, so every table event has a slip of paper or interactive board, such as coffee and consent, that we did to show and education healthy relationships,” said Pavlick.
Other activities included a self-defense class in which students practiced self defense skills to use to get out of tough situations and a mental health yoga class, taught by Lindsey Riddell.
Olivia Reichert, a junior occupational therapy major, was involved with multiple Cougar Consent Week activities.
“We did a friendship bracelet event. We did a candy salad event ,which had all blue candy, which is the color teal for Cougar consent. We usually do a walk at the end of the week, but because of the weather we did a celebration inside with cupcakes, hair tinsel, and a raffle.”
There were a great variety of events designed to please students, such as a consent and ice coffee day when students would answer questions to get ice coffee.
Reichert said the events and activities show students they are not alone.
“I think it is showing student that you have support on campus, such as you want support for yourself or others, and we should be talking about you want to help someone or help yourself. We are here to support you, and other people are here to support you, so just going about it that way,” said Reichert.
Pavlick said the university was also chosen to partner with the Victims Resource Center.
“It’s really exciting is Victims Resource Center Victims Rally chose us. They choose a location every year, and they chose us two years ago but then chose us again this year because we have a really strong partnership with them through our SART team so we really just come together as community,” said Pavlick.