Teaching about Victimization in the #MeToo Era: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

This introduction to the special issue of Journal of Criminal Justice Education titled Teaching About Victimization in the #MeToo Era focuses on the justification for the special issue and provides an overview of the included articles. The #MeToo social movement, changes in college campus policies and procedures (e.g. Title IX), and social and political unrest in the larger community (e.g. Black Lives Matter, the Insurrection), and the COVID pandemic have inevitably changed students and faculty personally, as well as impacted teaching both in the classroom and online. The articles in the special issue provide faculty with an opportunity to think about their teaching about victimization, including providing specific approaches to adopt or build upon. The introduction concludes with recommendations for how to elevate the importance of pedagogical work done by faculty.

Keywords:

• Teaching
• victimization
• #MeToo
• pedagogy
• Title IX

Tarana Burke, activist and sexual assault survivor, started the MeToo movement in 2006. Eleven years later, the Twitter hashtag #MeToo exploded, initially as a platform for women who had been sexually harassed by film producer Harvey Weinstein, and grew into a broad-based social movement to raise awareness of, and end sexual violence. #MeToo did not originate in the academy or on college campuses. Yet, it further strengthened a path, already charted by survivors of campus sexual assault, to share their stories, unfiltered, via social media and to use these online platforms as a medium for activism. Some examples include Twitter campaigns at two Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) – Spelman (@RapedAtSpelman) and Howard (#TakeBlackTheNightHU; New, 2016) – and the “Assaulters at UMich” (@AtUmich) Twitter account at the University of Michigan, along with subsequent, similar accounts at other campuses (Lee & Vedapudi, 2020). The Sexual Assault on the Hill Instagram account by College of the Holy Cross students touched off a campus-based social movement that included a sit-in and new investigations by the institution (Hanson, 2019).

The #MeToo movement dovetailed with general trends in higher education and, in particular, the intertwined disciplines of criminology and criminal justice. There has been an increasing awareness of the high prevalence rates of sexual assault and harassment on campuses, especially among undergraduate women, students with disabilities, and gender identity and sexual orientation minority students (Cantor et al., 2017, 2020), and the increasing prevalence of trauma exposure among college students, as well as evidence that significant numbers of them meet the diagnostic criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Bernat, Ronfeldt, Calhoun, & Arias, 1998; Boyraz, Granda, Baker, Tidwell, & Waits, 2016; Elhai et al., 2012; Pereira et al., 2018). Another trend across higher education is the growth of victimization-related courses (Growette Bostaph, Brady, & Giacomazzi, 2014), victim studies curricula (e.g. the University of Central Florida’s (UCF) undergraduate Victim Advocacy Certificate), and dedicated victimization-related research efforts (e.g. the Sexual Violence Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin). These trends resulted in a pedagogical focus on students’ classroom experiences with sensitive and difficult topics (e.g. Hulme & Kitching, 2017; Journell, 2017), and, combined with the growing attention to the use of trauma-informed practices by criminal justice professionals (Becker-Blease, 2017), resulted in forays into the use of trauma-informed teaching approaches (e.g. Bedera, 2021).

Institutional-level policies in higher education also impact the student experience especially those involving Title IX (Patsy Takemoto Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, 2002). Many institutions have designated faculty as responsible employees under Title IX for the purposes of student disclosures of victimization – which is essentially another way of saying faculty are mandated reporters for gender-based violence, including sexual assault and sexual harassment, on college campuses. Title IX directives concerning colleges’ responses to campus sexual assault have become political lightning rods, changing with each incoming administration. As we write this special issue introduction, under the directive of the Biden Administration, the U.S. Department of Education has concluded yet another series of public hearings related to Title IX changes mandated in the Final Rule by Betsy DeVos, Former Secretary of Education in the Trump Administration.

This convergence of multiple avenues through which victimization impacts our college and university students, our work as teachers and researchers, and changes in public policy and campus culture led us to propose this special issue in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education. We now turn in more detail to the focus of the special issue and its content.

Focus of the Special Issue

This special issue is focused on how the context of #MeToo impacts the pedagogy and direct practice of teaching, as well as interactions between faculty and students, and faculty and administration. In many ways, the need for this issue has been amplified since the call for papers was issued in February of 2020. The pandemic, social and political unrest (including Black Lives Matter and the Insurrection) and rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans introduced new or exacerbated existing stress and trauma, and victimization among students, all while classes continued throughout the semester. With COVID came the new challenge of many more faculty delivering content about different victimization-centered topics in synchronous online platforms (e.g. Zoom and WebEx), as well as asynchronous learning management systems (e.g. Blackboard, Canvas). This increase in stress and trauma and reduced in-person student-faculty contact made teaching about victimization, already a challenging endeavor, even more troublesome. And yet, the articles in this issue are tremendous sources of hope and why we believe this issue is timely and informative.

The five articles in this special issue span the classroom experience for students and faculty, from setting the stage to practical pedagogy to addressing student victimization and problematic behaviors. First, building from our Cares et al. (2019) study of college student attitudes, Cares, Madero-Hernandez, Growette Bostaph, and Fisher turn to faculty attitudes toward trigger warnings which appear to be diverse as well as central to teaching victimology. The hallmark of #MeToo, bringing survivors’ experiences to the forefront, is evident in both practical pedagogy articles included in this special issue. Parrotta, Bergquist, and Hans offer students’ perspectives on learning about violent victimization across course topic and assignment format, identifying numerous positive benefits. Jones provides an in-depth case study of student outcomes from a gender-based victimization course demonstrating student growth and resiliency over the term. But, as she reminds us, students are not the only ones affected by the #MeToo movement. Fitch, Sumareau, and Branch explore the types of problematic student behaviors female-identified faculty are experiencing, strategies used to address these behaviors, and their perceived effectiveness. The results reflect potentially concerning issues for women teachers in the classroom and beg for better resources to prepare faculty for these student-based challenges. We conclude this special issue with the direct presence of #MeToo in our classrooms: student disclosures of victimization. Richards, Branch, Pinchevsky, and Hayes delve into the messiness underlying institutional response to Title IX with an examination of various strategies universities are using to address student disclosures and include suggestions for how higher education can move forward in a trauma-focused, student-centered manner.

Our hopes are that this special issue stimulates thought and discussion around issues of teaching about victimization, particularly among those who have not considered these issues in the past and normalizes these discussions and considerations. As faculty who have taught a number of courses centered on victimization and related topics for many years (over 60 years collectively!), we are committed to the importance of teaching victimization in not only criminal justice and criminology departments but also in sociology, social work, and public health departments. Teaching raises the awareness of victimization and the negative short- and long-term consequences it has on individuals, families, communities (including college and university communities, too), and society. Awareness of a problem is part of the first step toward behavior change (Prochaska, DiClemente, & Norcross, 1993), which is needed to reduce victimization and better support those who experience it, those who are disclosed to by survivors, and those who are the responders to the report of victimization or deliver needed services. Therefore, it is vital that content on victimization be included in college curricula. How victimization is taught also matters. Content on victimization needs to be taught to lead to positive change but must be done so in a way that does not cause additional harm to student survivors or those who know survivors in the course, and increases understanding and empathy among those who have not experienced victimization. This type of teaching requires skill and, in the academy which is heavily focused on research production, we rarely recognize the value and impact of pedagogical contributions. We want to change that view by encouraging readers to write a letter to faculty or their chair (with the faculty member copied) that attests to using a practice they created and implemented or record the practice in action with student input and feedback included. This documentation can be used as part of tenure, promotion, and award applications or even shared more widely with colleagues who teach courses with victimization content. But, even more so, such messaging helps to elevate that what we do as teachers both in inside and outside the classroom is important, valued, and impactful.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa Growette Bostaph

Lisa M. Growette Bostaph is a Professor of Criminal Justice at Boise State University. She received her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati. She has been working in the field of victimization for 28 years, starting her career at the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project in Duluth, MN. Dr. Bostaph was also the founder of Project P.E.A.C.E, a crime scene crisis intervention project for four suburbs of Minneapolis, MN serving victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse. Dr. Bostaph's research focuses on police decision-making, criminal justice system response to victimization, and criminal justice education. She is currently working on two multi-year projects: a series of biennial reports on victimization and victim services in Idaho and another examining the prevalence, incidence, and systemic response to the victimization of people with disabilities.

Alison C. Cares

Alison C. Cares, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology and a member of the Violence Against Women Cluster at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida, U.S. Her career in the efforts to end violence against women started over 20 years ago as a community educator in a sexual assault and domestic violence services agency. Dr. Cares' research focuses on violence against women, primarily intimate partner violence and campus sexual assault. Her recent work has appeared in Journal of Criminal Justice Education, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Violence & Victims, and Violence Against Women. She enjoys teaching undergraduate and graduate courses including victimology, sexual violence, domestic violence, and research methods.

Bonnie S. Fisher

Bonnie S. Fisher is a Distinguish Research Professor in the School of Criminal Justice (SCJ) at the University of Cincinnati. Her research interests span victimological topics ranging from the measurement and estimate of interpersonal violence against college students to the identification of theory-based predictors of interpersonal victimization to understanding state-level regulation of campus conceal carry laws, and most recently, to the design and implementation of a longitudinal study of interpersonal violence against and by emerging adults. During her career, she has published articles in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of Interpersonal Violence and Violence Against Women. She was the Co-P I, with David Cantor, on the 2015 and 2019 Association of American University's Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Misconduct and a consultant, with Professor Sandy Martin, on the University of Hawai´i's 2017, 2019, and 2021 Student Climate Survey on Sexual Harassment and Gender-Based Violence. Since 2018, she, along with the UC SCJ team, has partnered with a local non-for-profit organization, Women Helping Women, to evaluate their Domestic Violence Enhanced Response Team (DVERT). Annually she teaches an undergraduate course in victimology and a graduate-level Seminar in Victimology—hence her interest in the use of trigger warnings.