Alumna Dr. Annie Stevens (in red on far left) at the table with Vice President Joe Biden for the White House Conference with higher education officials.
COLLEGE PARK, MD (March, 2014) Vice President Joe Biden has been hosting a series of conversations with key stakeholders and leaders in the education community as part of the newly launched White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. Two UMD College of Education members from the Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Educationdoctoral student Jessica Bennett and alumna Dr. Annie Stevens have visited and contributed to the task force in the past month, bringing their variety of experience in student affairs to illuminate the issue of campus sexual assault.
Bennett's student affairs work involves efforts at fraternities and sororities to reduce sexual violence in the Greek and other communities at the University of Maryland. "This role also demands a translation of feminist perspectives on sexual violence, gender, and sexuality to a broad audience of students who do not identify as feminist," she explains.
Doctoral student Jessica Bennett at the White House.
"The prevalence of rape and sexual assault at our nation's institutions of higher education is both deeply troubling and a call to action," President Obama wrote in a January memorandum establishing the task force, which is led mutually by the Office of the Vice President and the White House Council on Women and Girls. The memorandum noted that institutional compliance with federal laws aimed at preventing campus sexual assaults and at investigating and taking swift action on reports of such crimes "is uneven and, in too many cases, inadequate."
Dr. Annie Stevens is the Vice Provost for Student Affairs at the University of Vermont, where for six years she also chaired the President's Commission for Social Change. She earned her Ph.D. in Counseling and Student Personnel Services at the University of Maryland in 1997.
Jessica Bennett is a doctoral student in CHSE's Higher Education, Student Affairs, and International Education Policy program. She holds a masters in Higher Education and Student Affairs from The Ohio State University and a bachelors in Cognitive Science from the University of Virginia.
Click here to visit the White House blog page on the Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.
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