Abstract for: Addressing Gender-Based Violence in Universities: How to reduce violence, survivor trauma, and hold perpetrators accountable

Gender-based violence is a prevalent problem on college campuses. Although all universities on paper, does not tolerate gender-based violence, the University’s primary responder – Title IX systems – rarely act to support a survivor and/or hold the perpetrator accountable. I built a systems dynamics model to understand to what extent various policies would reduce violence and survivor trauma, while providing justice and accountability. I modeled survivors moving through the Title IX system and the survivors’ accumulating trauma. I based my parameters on insights from research on the current Title IX system, cultural climate of sexual violence, and initiatives to address gender-based violence. I tested policy interventions by considering where they impact the system, where they move survivors in context of the Title IX system, and how much survivors heal or are traumatized. The results suggest that having a couple programs is not enough to address all aspects of a survivor’s experience of gender-based violence. For example, just improving the Title IX increases those receiving traumatizing results as well as healing results, and average trauma experienced per person barely decreases except for survivors who are in the Title IX system. Holistic approaches should also involve trauma reduction services and cultural change. A stocks-flow model shows that trauma is not impacted only by the healing but also retraumatization, which suggests the importance of both providing resources to survivors and changing the culture. The model also shows the significant power universities do have to address gender-based violence through a combination of increasing resources and cultural and policy changes that work in conjunction with each other to address all parts of the system. AI was used to provide grammar suggestions for a few sentences/phrases