The End Sexual Violence on Campus awareness campaign has been postponed due to the COVID-19 epidemic. The campaign, organized by a group of ConVal High School students over the course of the last year, centered on a month of action against sexual violence in the community and was scheduled to start March 24.
Reagan Riffle, 16, is the primary organizer of the group. “Our team is really disappointed, but we are going to look to postpone the events to a later month this year, she wrote. “We are leaning away from online events because of the nature of the movement and the impact we wish to make.”
The organization’s overall mission is to uproot sexual violence in the Monadnock community, Riffle said, with specific goals focused on lifting the stigma around its discussion, and changing key state and school district standards to protect survivors of sexual assault. The campaign’s website outlines the specific changes requested, and includes providing trauma-informed counseling and consent education in public schools, as well as ending the statute of limitations on sex-related crimes. These require buy-in from voters – something that Riffle, as a minor, can’t do herself.
Riffle’s involvement began last summer, when she interviewed 85 girls from the region who were in high school or their first years of college. “It was a 100% passion project,” she said, “basically girl talk,” asking participants about their opinions on specific challenges they faced as females. She discovered that a good majority had seen or experienced sexual violence, which surprised her. “In an area like this, you assume it’s small” she said, and that she was additionally troubled by how many interviewees thought their personal experience was an anomaly. “Someone’s got to talk about it,” she said.
The organization’s mission was inspired by Riffle’s subsequent research and by the efforts of End Rape on Campus, a college-focused organization, she said.
The series of 15 planned events included community discussions, guest speakers, writing workshops, and letter writing campaigns.
“We hope to field a full month of events, in person, in the community spaces that we love, and with great participation, once things have settled down,” she said.