Cabrini has recently been awarded a $300,000 federal grant from the Department of Justice. This grant is to help with the prevention of sexual assaults on the colleges campus.
Dr. Jessica Burman, therapist from Counseling & Psychological Services, defines sexual assault as “any unwanted or non-consensual touching [or] sex acts, stalking, domestic violence or dating violence.”
When the opportunity for the grant came up, Cabrini jumped on it. “We’re really committed to this issue but we can be doing more” Jean Jacobson, di- rector of sponsored programs and foundation relations, said. “[We want to] create a culture of awareness.”
There were a number of things that had to be in place at Cabrini before the college could even apply for the the grant. The Department of Justice wanted to see that the college not only has programs on campus to deal with sexual assault but that the college is also partnering with outside organizations.
Cabrini has partnerships both with the Radnor Police Department and the organization Delaware County Women Against Rape. Delaware County Women Against Rape is the college’s victim services provider so any victims of sexual assault have a safe place they can go to get any help they need.
Cabrini was chosen out of 27 schools nation wide to receive this grant. The grant aids in training for faculty and programming for students.
“The grant is going to hire a full-time project director,” Jacobson said. “The project will involve a lot of training internally for our staff on how to deal with [sexual assault], how to work with our outside partners and [the] training is actually provided by the department of justice.”
There will also be programming for students to educate them on what to do when faced with these situations as well as training on how to protect themselves in dangerous situations.
“College is not just about teaching you your major but about teaching you life skills,” Burman said.
“The idea is to help the victim and that’s the purpose of this grant,” Jacob- son said. “By doing this grant, by doing this training, creating this awareness, we’re really going to help make the world a safer place in many, many ways.”
