The 2020's have sparked a resurgence of public discourse about the role of police and prisons in our society--including in educational settings. In their recent piece, "Title IX Policies Mirror the Prison System and Harm Student Survivors," featured in the National Center for Institutional Diversity's Spark Magazine issue, Imagining Abolition and Educational Safety Beyond Policing, Dr. McDaniel and Dr. Gómez recount a brief history of how popular practices addressing sexual violence create new courtrooms and punitive practices on campuses, further traumatizing survivors and inadvertently upholding a culture of harm. Additionally, in the wake of newly released Title IX federal regulations, building survivor-centered policies and practices is urgent. 

In this webinar, perpetration etiology and primary prevention expert, Dr. M. Colleen McDaniel will share what myths led to the rise of punitive responses to sexual violence on campuses and how survivors are harmed by current policies and practices. Crucially, prison abolitionist and scholar, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, stated that "Abolition is about presence." As such, Dr. McDaniel will apply this doctrine by introducing a range of survivor-centered and trauma-informed initiatives that campus professionals can implement in order to build towards abolition, and therefore more egalitarian, violence free communities.