Two student groups will conduct peer-to-peer sexual assault prevention and awareness trainings for fraternity Beta Theta Pi this month.

It’s On Us at GW, a chapter of the national organization that combats sexual assault on college campuses, and GW Reproductive Autonomy and Gender Equity will host their inaugural training with the fraternity Nov. 17 to have conversations about sexual assault prevention. Leaders of the student groups said GW’s annual mandatory Title IX trainings for incoming students and on-campus organizations underemphasize the prevalence of sexual violence on campus, and they hope engaging directly with men about sexual assault prevention will fill a gap in direct advocacy on campus.

The training will follow a peer-to-peer model, with students teaching other students instead of a professor or official leading the training. Leaders of It’s On Us — a sexual assault survivor-led group — and GW RAGE said the structure of the Nov. 17 training is still being determined but said each group will lead half of the training for Beta members.

Junior Zoe Larkey, the founder and president of It’s On Us at GW said she hopes that peer-to-peer sexual assault prevention training with Interfraternity Council chapters will engage male students in conversations about prevention methods including bystander intervention, which involves inserting oneself in an interaction to stop a potentially problematic situation.

Larkey said her organization and RAGE are speaking with male student groups because research has shown that men are more likely to commit acts of sexual assault on college campuses than other demographics. ​​Male students in fraternities are three times more likely to be the perpetrators of sexual assault than their nonaffiliated peers, according to the Guardian.

“We’re not trying to attack them or make them feel othered,” Larkey said. “It’s more how can we bring them into this conversation and make them feel included?”

Larkey said the peer-to-peer model allows chapter members to ask the student educators questions directly, as well as open a discussion between attendees to make male students feel included and willing to share their previous experiences with sexual misconduct. She said the training will go over bystander intervention and emphasize topics men have told her they are concerned about, like receiving consent without “ruining the mood.”

“If you think about who young men are going to listen to, the chances that they listen to a fellow student are a lot statistically higher than someone coming in from the department, like the Title IX office, to speak to them,” Larkey said.

Research has shown that peer education models have higher rates of retention of information and participation. SafeBAE, a student-led national organization that seeks to prevent sexual misconduct among teens, reported in March 2023 that after participating in a peer education training, students reported a 66 percent increase in their understanding of being an active bystander, an 81 percent increase in understanding Title IX rights and a 56 percent increase in understanding “healing options” after experiencing sexual violence.

Larkey said she hopes to work with the remaining IFC chapters, as well as male club athletics teams in the future.

Larkey said she is glad that GW enforces mandatory Title IX training for first-years and student groups but said the hourlong training is a “complete understatement” of how large the problem of sexual assault on campus is, which Larkey said is a major issue that does not get discussed enough. Larkey said she hopes the peer-to-peer training will teach male students what to do when their friends are bringing someone home that seems “too drunk,” which she said the Title IX training didn’t “touch on.”

The Title IX Office received 104 reports of sexual assault between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, according to the office’s second annual report released last December.

“I think that Title IX should be the floor, not the ceiling,” Larkey said.

RAGE Co-President Stephanie Spector said that when sexual prevention trainings are in the form of online modules, like GW’s training for student groups, participants often “mindlessly” scroll through it and do not have discussions about what they learned. She said RAGE has been in communication with the Title IX office to improve the mandatory training for student organizations on a University-wide scale, like making them more interactive and discussion based.

“I just think that’s something hard for folks to really relate to and take something away from,” Spector said.

Spector said the format of the training is still being “fleshed out” but that RAGE wants to inform participants about safe sex options and sexual health resources, like STD testing and birth control. She said she hopes conversation-based training about sexual misconduct opens the floor to hear perspectives from survivors firsthand and to ask questions.

“There’s definitely kind of a stigma and talking about safe sex and talking about consent and things like that among those spaces,” Spector said.

Beta President Alec Shafran, a junior, said the University’s mandatory Title IX training is “arbitrary,” and since fraternities carry a negative reputation surrounding sexual assault, additional training from peers “puts a face” to the experiences they’re learning about.

He said these informational conversations are easier with someone he knows than a GW official.

“We just wanted to be a part of that change and a part of a very important movement of people that are starting to talk about this as the serious issue that it is,” Shafran said.

Shafran said his chapter takes sexual misconduct “extremely seriously,” and this training serves as a reminder to chapter members that sexual assault is something the entire fraternity has to look out for constantly, instead of only designated members, like the vice president of risk management and sober monitors.

“Bringing it into that environment is something that will have a positive nonetheless, even if it is something that plenty of others have already done over and over and over again,” Shafran said.

Shafran said GW Students Against Sexual Assault used to host similar trainings for IFC chapters in previous years, but last year, the trainings switched to being led by University officials. He said Title IX trainings are helpful for learning the process of reporting sexual assault to the University and the “chain of command” with reports, and SASA’s training was “more educational” when learning specific language about sexual misconduct and available resources.

“I feel like the SASA training was a lot more applicable to just overall day-to-day stuff, whereas Title IX is a little more useful in an official capacity,” Shafran said.