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Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Awareness Events at Salem College
Click here for details about programs on campus this month.

Confidential Resources

Salem Counseling Services: (336) 721-2625

Salem Health Services: (336) 917-5591

Salem Chaplain’s Office: (336) 917-5087

Forsyth County Family Services: (336) 722-4457

National Sexual Assault Hotline: (800) 656-4673

National Sexual Assault Online Hotline

Sexual Assault Awareness

Local Organizations


Family Services’ professional staff and trained, compassionate volunteers provide crucial services to individuals who have experienced a sexual assault, whether the assault occurred recently or if the incident happened many years ago.	The North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault is an inclusive, statewide alliance working to end sexual violence through education, advocacy, and legislation.

National Organizations


The National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) is the leading nonprofit in providing information and tools to prevent and respond to sexual violence.	RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization. RAINN created and operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline and also carries out programs to prevent sexual violence, help survivors, and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice

National Advocacy Campaigns


For the past 20 years, Peace Over Violence has run its Denim Day campaign on a Wednesday in April in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The campaign began after a ruling by the Italian Supreme Court where a rape conviction was overturned because the justices felt that since the victim was wearing tight jeans she must have helped the person who raped her remove her jeans, thereby implying consent.	Launched in September 2014, It’s On Us is a national movement to end sexual assault. The campaign was launched following recommendations from the White House Task Force to Prevent Sexual Assault that noted the importance of engaging everyone in the conversation to end sexual violence.	Our Mission as a charitable 501(c)3 Foundation is to end sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual abuse and all other forms of sexual violence. We serve to create safe communities and respectful relationships through awareness events and initiatives. People of all backgrounds around the world are taking back their voices by speaking out against these crimes and taking a stand through Take Back The Night.

Available Online - eBooks

The Beginning and End of Rape by Sarah Deer
ISBN: 9781452945743
Publication Date: 2015-01-01
Violence against Native women is historical and political, bounded by oppression and colonial violence. This book, like all of Sarah Deer's work, is aimed at engaging the problem head-on--and ending it. The Beginning and End of Rape collects and expands the powerful writings in which Deer, who played a crucial role in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2013, has advocated for cultural and legal reforms to protect Native women from endemic sexual violence and abuse.
Campus Sexual Assault by Lauren J. Germain
ISBN: 9781421419060
Publication Date: 2016-04-05
In Campus Sexual Assault, Lauren J. Germain focuses attention on the post-sexual assault experiences of twenty-six college women. She reframes conversations about sexual violence and student agency on American college campuses by drawing insight directly from the stories of how survivors responded individually to attacks, as well as how and why peers, family members, and school, medical, and civil authorities were (or were not) engaged in addressing the crimes.
Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
ISBN: 9781849352611
Publication Date: 2017-03-20
In the tradition of Octavia Butler, here is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Change is constant. The world, our bodies, and our minds are in a constant state of flux. They are a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, Emergent Strategy teaches us to map and assess the swirling structures and to read them as they happen, all the better to shape that which ultimately shapes us, personally and politically. A resolutely materialist spirituality based equally on science and science fiction: a wild feminist and afro-futurist ride! adrienne maree brown, co-editor of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, is a social justice facilitator, healer, and doula living in Detroit.
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander; Cornel West (Introduction by)
ISBN: 9781595588197
Publication Date: 2012-01-16
Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness.
Pushout: the criminalization of Black girls in schools by Monique W. Morris
ISBN: 9781620971208
Publication Date: 2016-03-29
Fifteen-year-old Diamond stopped going to school the day she was expelled for lashing out at peers who constantly harassed and teased her for something everyone on the staff had missed: she was being trafficked for sex. After months on the run, she was arrested and sent to a detention center for violating a court order to attend school. Black girls represent 16 percent of female students but almost half of all girls with a school-related arrest. The first trade book to tell these untold stories, Pushout exposes a world of confined potential and supports the growing movement to address the policies, practices, and cultural illiteracy that push countless students out of school and into unhealthy, unstable, and often unsafe futures.
Sexual Assault by Sheila Miller
ISBN: 9781536105360
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Sexual victimization is highly prevalent in the United States, with 63% of women and 24% of men reporting experiences of sexual victimization in their lifetime. Given the wide range of deleterious outcomes associated with sexual victimization investigations focused on identifying factors associated with negative health outcomes stemming from sexual victimization have great clinical and public health significance. This book provides new research on the prevalence, health effects and coping strategies of sexual assault.
Sexual Assault in the Military by Shawn Woodham
ISBN: 9781631170164
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
This book examines how the Department of Defense and its Armed Services--the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force (the Services) respond to Service members who report having been sexually assaulted and how it investigates and disciplines Service members accused of perpetrating sexual assault. This book also reviews how the military educates Service members and trains military criminal investigators and military lawyers about sexual assault offenses. The topic is both relevant and timely, as Congress is currently considering ways to address this issue.
Trauma Stewardship by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky; Connie Burk
ISBN: 9781605092638
Publication Date: 2009-05-01
A longtime trauma worker, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky offers a deep and empathetic survey of the often-unrecognized toll taken on those working to make the world a better place. We may feel tired, cynical, or numb or like we can never do enough. These, and other symptoms, affect us individually and collectively, sapping the energy and effectiveness we so desperately need if we are to benefit humankind, other living things, and the planet itself. In Trauma Stewardship, we are called to meet these challenges in an intentional way--to keep from becoming overwhelmed by developing a quality of mindful presence.

Books in Gramley Library

Conquest by Andrea Smith; Winona LaDuke (Foreword by)
Call Number: E98 .W8 S62 2005
ISBN: 0896087441
Publication Date: 2008-04-01
In "Conquest," Smith places Native American women at the center of her analysis of sexual violence, challenging both conventional definitions of the term and conventional responses to the problem. Beginning with the impact of the abuses inflicted on Native American children at state-sanctioned boarding schools from the 1880s to the 1980s, Smith adroitly expands our conception of violence to include environmental racism, population control and the widespread appropriation of Indian cultural practices by whites and other non-natives.
Crank by Ellen Hopkins
Call Number: Reading Room - Hopkins
ISBN: 9781416995135
Publication Date: 2010-06-15
This is a story about a monster. Not a dragon or a mythological beast, but a very real, very destructive monster--crystal meth--that takes hold of seventeen-year-old Kristina Snow and transforms her into her reckless alter-ego Bree. Based on her own daughter's addiction to crystal meth, Ellen Hopkins' novel-in-verse is a vivid, transfixing look into teenage drug use. Told in Kristina's voice, it provides a realistic portrayal of the tortured logic of an addict.
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Call Number: PS3553.I78 H6 1994
ISBN: 067943335X
Publication Date: 1994-04-26
In hardcover for the first time--on the tenth anniversary of its initial publication--the greatly admired and bestselling book about a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, this novel depicts a new American landscape through its multiple characters.
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Call Number: PS3619 .E26 L68 2002
ISBN: 0316666343
Publication Date: 2002-07-03
"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling.
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Call Number: PZ7.A54385 Sp 2011
ISBN: 9780312674397
Publication Date: 2011-05-10
The first ten lies they tell you in high school. "Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication.

Films in Gramley Library

Boys Don't Cry
Call Number: Salem College Library Film Collection - PN1997 .B69 2000
Publication Date: 2000
A transgendered youth starts living as a man, and assumes the name Brandon Teena. He moves to a tiny Nebraska town and begins making new friends under his new identity. All goes well until his new friends discover his secret. Based on a true story about hope, fear, and the courage it takes to be yourself.
The Color Purple
Call Number: Salem College Library Film Collection - PS3573.A425 C6 2003
Publication Date: 1985 (DVD 2003)
The heart-wrenching story of a young black girl in the early 20th century who's forced into a brutal marriage and separated from her sister.

Salem College is committed to maintaining a safe learning, living, and working environment for all members of the Salem community in which academic and professional excellence can flourish free from sex discrimination and sexual misconduct.

There are many types of sexual violence. The Salem College Student Handbook includes the following definitions (p.38):

Rape is penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.

Sexual assault is a form of sexual harassment that involves having or attempting to have sexual contact with another person without consent.

Sexual exploitation is taking sexual advantage of or sexually exploiting another person without their consent, such as the non-consensual videotaping of an individual engaging in sexual activity, the knowing exposure of an individual to a sexually transmitted disease, or the non-consensual observation of an individual engaging in sexual acts.

Sexual / gender-based harassment is behavior directed at a person of a sexual nature or based on their sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or sex / gender stereotypes, when that behavior is unwelcome and meets one of the following criteria:

submission to the behavior is made an express or implied term or condition of employment or education for that person
submission to or rejection of the behavior is a factor in an employment or educational decision (such as hiring, promotion, or grading a course) for that person
the conduct has the purpose of or could reasonably be judged to have the effect of interfering with the work or educational performance of, or creating a hostile working or learning environment for, that person

Examples of conduct that may constitute sexual / gender-based harassment include, but are not limited to: threats that rejection of sexual advances or requests for sexual favors will impact the educational status of a student; physical assault based on gender identity; severe, persistent, or pervasive unwelcome comments based on the sex or gender of a person that interfere with their participation in school-related activities; a pattern of unwelcome sexually explicit statements, questions, jokes, or anecdotes in classroom or extracurricular activity settings; unwelcome touching, patting, hugging, or brushing against someone; unwanted remarks of a sexual nature about clothing, body, sexual activity, or previous sexual experiences.