On April 30, Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel informed the Brandeis community in an email of the steps that the Brandeis administration is taking in addressing sexual assault prevention on campus. These steps include the provision of bystander training for staff, faculty and students, as well as the creation of the Brandeis Resource Guide for Sexual Assault Survivors.

“Sexual violence is an injustice we at Brandeis will not tolerate,” Flagel wrote in the email. He went on to acknowledge an online petition on change.org created by the group Brandeis Students Against Sexual Violence, which formed this spring. 

The petition was created on April 7 and has garnered 2,631 signatures in support of the group’s specific demands of the University’s administration. 

The online petition calls for the administration to make available resources about sexual assault and for the reporting of incidents, for a psychologist specializing in sexual trauma to be made available for long term counseling at the Psychological Counseling Center and for a permanent rape crisis center to be created on campus.

Flagel wrote in an email to the Justice that the University is in the process of drafting its response to the petition. Once the draft is complete, the University will work with the students involved with the petition to finalize it.

The April 30 announcement to the Brandeis community continues on to say that the University is “in the midst of developing a new website” designed around providing access to sexual assault services and prevention.

Flagel wrote to the Justice that the website should be up and running in late August, although students, staff and faculty can expect communications about it over the summer in order to ensure that the entire Brandeis community is involved and to “ensure [that] the launch meets students needs.”