Boots in Benevolence - 1 is 2 Many

Tune in for a discussion with Claire Leffingwell - Coordinator of the Oklahoma State chapter of 1 is 2 Many, a national movement of sexual assault awareness prevention - hosted by Annaliese Wentroble and Tanna Richardson. Learn about what distinguishes philanthropy from service, and how you can help advance the work of 1 is 2 Many. No sacrifice of time or money is needed to make our campus, and our world, a safer, healthier place. 

Learn more about 1 is 2 Many and their resources to combat and end sexual violence here.      

Visit the Stuff OSU Should Know homepage to browse previously released podcasts!

Transcript

STUFF OSU SHOULD KNOW

Boots in Benevolence: 1 is 2 Many

PRODUCED FALL  2024; RELEASED JAN. 2025

(21:51)

Cast:

Tanna Richardson, Annaliese Wentroble

Guest: Claire Leffingwell, Coordinator of 1 is 2 Many

[00:00:00]

INTRO: 

This is Stuff [crowd chanting O-S-U] Should Know [drumroll]...

Tanna: Good day, boots, and thank you for tuning in to Boots In Benevolence. Hosting you today,  I am Tanna Richardson. 

Annaliese: And I'm Annaliese Wentroble. 

Tanna: And in this episode, we're going to be talking with Miss Claire Leffingwell, coordinator of 1 is 2 Many, about her organization and all that it represents. How are you doing today, Claire?

Claire Leffingwell: I'm good. How are you? 

Tanna: I'm great! 

Annaliese: I'm good as well, thank you. 

Claire: Yeah, I'm happy to be here! 

Annaliese: Yes, we're excited to have you. [00:30] So something that we talked about earlier, that I wanted to bring up, was how you feel about philanthropy, like what your perspective of what philanthropy is? Because on campus, there can be different barriers for students or faculty when thinking about philanthropy. Such as: students will feel like they're under qualified, or like both students and faculty. There's also sometimes the idea of the financial prospect, like the fact that their money wouldn't go very far if they were to give. And so something that you mentioned was that you don't necessarily consider 1 is 2 Many as a philanthropic organization because of that financial aspect. It's not raising money. But we were really excited to talk to you, because it's a way for students and faculty to get involved in something that is really important about our college campus without that financial aspect of it. 

Claire [01:29]: Yeah, I think there's a big difference between philanthropy, philanthropic organizations, and service organizations, right? But, they both have this component of like giving resources, whether that's time or your expertise or your skills, or your money, right? But we also recognize that we're on a college campus, and students don't tend to have a lot of money, but there's a lot of organizations on campus that exist because they want to ask students to give to more than just themselves, right? So there's a lot of different ways that students can get involved on campus, by getting involved with volunteer opportunities, or just in an issue that they care about, which I think is really where 1 is 2 Many lives, is we are an issue that specific people care a lot about, but part of our mission is to get a lot of students to care about it, and we can talk about ways that students can get involved a little later. But I think that's something that's important to me with 1 is 2 Many is showing that everybody can do something in their everyday life that contributes to sexual violence prevention, or supporting survivors, or things like that. That's not necessarily just having a check that you drop off at a charity or a philanthropic event or something like that. There's a lot of different ways. So I think 1 is 2 Many is philanthropic in that way. But it's not just something where people can dump their money at; we have to get people to care about the things that we want to care about.

Tanna: Can you tell us a little bit about the history of 1 is 2 Many. Like, how did this become such an important cause to this campus? 

[02:44]

Claire: Yeah, so I had to do my research a little bit on the history. So I've only been in this role for about two and a half years, and so I knew that it existed a lot longer than that. And so I went to some people who have been here longer to try to piece that together. So, Sexual Violence Prevention has existed on college campuses and at OSU for a while, right? It wasn't like the biggest thing, but we knew that sexual assault was an issue on college campuses, and so there's a lot about kind of awareness programs. So trying to make students aware that sexual violence was an issue on our campus: drawing attention to how if you experience something like you're believed and we support you, and those kind of things. 

In 2013, the Violence Against Women Act was a… it's a federal legislative act. In the Obama Administration, 2013, reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act. We call that VAWA (vah-wah). And so with that reauthorization, they launched essentially a campaign from the White House about 1 is 2 Many. So that was like a White House given name, that one victim is too many. One incident of sexual assault is too many. And so OSU at that time was like, in a kind of period of transition where we needed to put some more emphasis on sexual assault prevention. And so we adopted the name 1 is 2 Many. We're like, well, if the White House can do it, we can do it right [laughs], if it's this federal backed thing. And so we had some, like, graduate interns and part time, like Student Conduct staff that helped do the 1 is 2 Many work. 

But it wasn't until around like 2018 that we had a full time staff member who was dedicated to doing 1 is 2 Many's work, and was like a coordinator for 1 is 2 Many. 2014 at that same time was when we were required to have every student do the new student online training that we have students complete; that started in 2014. So we just had our 10 year anniversary, not the most exciting thing, but we did. And so that has been going on for a long time, but I think we've really grown in the other types of prevention that we do. We have confidential victim advocates. We've had those for a number of years. We couldn't pinpoint exactly how many years we've had those, but we added student victim advocates. And again, I can talk about those as a way people can get involved. We added those in 2022 and then I started in this role in May 202,  so the history that I'm super familiar with since then. That's probably more than you need to know about the summary of 1 is 2 Many.

[4:56]

Tanna: I think it's like super interesting that we got our roots from, like, the White House like that is actually crazy.

Claire: Yeah, Title IX is a federal legislation. So, Title IX oversees a lot of different things, but specifically how we handle and respond to sexual assault cases: how we educate about them, how we remedy the situation, how we act upon them, and make sure the students are supported and held accountable. Those are both important things. So we've always had this kind of federal backing, but we really took that and said, "Okay, if this is a federal thing that's being taken seriously on all sorts of campuses, we're gonna make sure that we're taking that seriously at OSU as well." 

Tanna: Yeah, and I seriously think, like, the online training that is, like, great. Thank y’all so much for, like, doing that.

Claire: Yeah, yeah, And we've added a lot to the training too. It used to be just sexual violence, and so we used to call it the "1 is 2 Many" training, now because of different issues that arise on campus and also different like kind of Board of Regents saying that we need to include these topics. We've included mental health and cyber security, and so those didn't always exist as topics. So that's why we've shifted from "1 is 2 Many" training to new student online training. So it's not just sexual violence, but yeah, important that all students complete that. 

Annaliese: It's really exciting to see how something like this can evolve, [Claire: Yeah], and it can adapt to exactly what the campus needs. So can you tell us how students can get involved specifically? 

[6:17]

Claire: Yeah, absolutely. That's my favorite thing to talk about. Because, right, I can say, "Oh, these things are really important. Oh, everyone should get involved," but we've got to give students ways to actually get involved. So a couple of different involvement opportunities we have with 1 is 2 Many: 

One is, they're called prevention ambassadors. This is a relatively new program for 1 is 2 Many. So we used to have some other different involvement groups, and we, they kind of lost some momentum. And so we like, “Okay, what's the new group that we can create?” We're really at students who are passionate about sexual assault prevention. Maybe have had an experience with sexual violence where they're like, “I want to give back, I want to speak out,” right? Do some of those things, although they don't have to have that experience. So that's a group that they kind of serve as an advisory board. So they help plan programs, events, campaigns, initiatives, things like that. Usually, if I'm like, “I don't know if this is going to work with the students. I don't know if they care about this,” I take it to them, and they're like, "Yep, this is what we need to do. We're going to change it. We're going to translate into student language, right?" Those kind of things. And so that's a group. We meet twice a month, and we're on campus link. That's the best way that students can get involved. 

We also have student victim advocates, like I mentioned. So our victim advocates are confidential resources that are available to all students who have experienced sexual violence. So they have a phone number that people can call or text at any hour, any day, even over breaks, holidays, those kind of things. So we have two full time staff members that work at OSU that do the daytime hours, like the 8 to 5, Monday through Friday, and then we have students who do the overnights and the weekends. And so we're always looking for students who are interested in doing that, more response type of thing. So if you… for people who feel like they're really empathetic, good at listening, maybe are wanting to be a counselor someday, those kind of things are, that's the type of student that we're looking for. And we usually hire for those around once to twice a year, which kind of depends on when we have spots open. But they can just reach out if they're interested. 

Those are the really two formal ways that we have for students to get involved, like, that's you put it on your resume kind of thing. There's a lot of ways that students can get involved with supporting 1 is 2 Many without ever coming to a meeting, without ever formally meeting me, right? So we ask and invite all students to be active bystanders. If they see something happening, intervene and stop something. We use four D's, delegate, distract, direct and delay. So there's, there's different strategies that you can use to intervene. That, in a way, is supporting 1 is 2 Many's initiative without being like a formal part of our organization, which I think is really important. And just to let people know around you that you're a safe person for people to come to if they need to disclose something. So, if you know you have friends in your life that you suspect may have experienced some incident of sexual violence, just being a safe person, knowing the signs and maybe what might be happening, knowing how to respond to someone in a way that's helpful. Those are ways that I think we don't promote as student involvement opportunities, but are still ways that we ask students to kind of get on board with 1 is 2 Many's messaging and campaign without needing to take too much time out of their day, because we talked about, like, limited resources, right? So those are some thoughts about how to get involved.

[9:17]

Tanna: And how do you feel about like, maybe people who don't feel like they have the credibility to get involved in initiatives like that?

Claire: Yeah, so like they're feeling like they're not an expert in sexual violence prevention? [Tanna: Yes.] One, we provide a lot of training so you don't really have to have the content knowledge. Really, it's just if you have been impacted or could imagine the impact that sexual violence has on someone's life, that's pretty much all we need from you, right? Like we need people who care about preventing or really eradicating sexual violence on campus. That's all we can ask for. We can train on all the other stuff, right? We have lots of students. There's some students who come in and they transfer from another school, and they did this exact same thing at their transfer school. They're super quote-unquote qualified, right? They feel like they have all the training and the expertise. We have some students who are just stumble across our table on campus and say, "That sounds like something I would like to do because I've been impacted, or I have a friend or family member who's been impacted; sign me up," and we train them. It just really doesn't take a lot of training, because we ask all students to know how to talk about consent, bystander intervention, boundaries, conflict management, all those things. So yeah, I think that that's a legitimate concern. Of like, “this is a serious topic, and how do I feel equipped to be able to talk about those,” but I think that should not be a barrier for getting involved about something that people care about or should care about, arguably. [Tanna and Annaliese, both: Yes!] 

Tanna: So how did you personally become involved in 1 is 2 Many? 

Claire: Yeah, kind of by accident [laughs], I'll be honest. So talking about people who didn't have, like, formal training or skills. So, I didn't go to OSU for undergrad. I went to a smaller school in Kansas, and I got a degree in psychology. So I knew I wanted to work with people in some capacity. I thought I wanted to be a counselor. Then I thought I wanted to, like, do research, and then I was like, "I don't know what I'm gonna do." I had a career crisis senior year of college and decided I was going to go to graduate school for Higher Education and Student Affairs. And so essentially what happened is I talked to people that I went or worked with at my college, and I said,"How do I do what you do?" And they said, “Well you can go get your master's in this." And so I went and did that here at OSU. So I came back to OSU, got my Master's. As part of my master's program, I had to do an internship. Actually, I had to do two, but the second one, I wanted one that was on OSU's campus so I could get experience where I was currently working. And I had done a previous assignment with the person who's in this role before me. Her name was Olivia. I had done an assignment like interviewing her, very similar to this being like, "What's your job? What do you talk about?" All those kind of things, and just kind of enjoyed what she did. And it was something I was like, I could, I could see myself doing that. Interned with her for about like six months of my last year of graduate school, and then she announced that she was leaving, and I needed a job, and so I applied and started in this role. 

So really just kind of fell into it. But I think with working with the person who's in the person who's in the role before me, and seeing all the good things, 1 is 2 Many could do, seeing the impact that it had on campus, and seeing, especially the time where I was starting, we were on the cusp of, like, a lot of changes in momentum that we could have gotten. And so I was excited about continuing to, like, push 1 is 2 Many forward and get some campaigns and ideas going. So that's how I got involved. Did not have formal sexual assault prevention training, sexual violence prevention training. Nobody officially trained me before I got the job, but I cared enough about it and wanted to learn. And so, yeah, that's how I got involved.

[12:33]

Tanna: So you mentioned interning with Olivia? [Claire: em, hm] Do you feel like there would be opportunity for someone to intern with you then?

Claire: So, yeah!, it depends on, like, the semester and the time and really what we need. So we have had, so, yeah, I was a graduate intern, and then when I started, we had a graduate assistant, so she was actually employed by us. We had that every year since. We have had, actually, prior to me, we had undergraduate interns that would help with, like, some programming, yea really basic programming, like putting on events and things like that.  And then we'll, we'll have an intern, a graduate intern, in the spring, that's gonna help us some more, like data assessment type stuff, not the flashy stuff, but very important, right? And so I don't… it's never something that we're like, necessarily hiring for, but if people have interests and want to be involved, we can probably find a way, as long as we have the work to be done, which there's always more work to be done. But yeah, that's definitely an opportunity. If people are really interested and want to reach out, they're welcome to.

Tanna: So thank you for talking about that. Thank you for sharing a part of your story.

Claire: Yeah, of course.

Annaliese: Can you tell us how this organization has, like, impacted you, and in what ways it's important in your life? 

[13:44]

Claire: Yeah, I think… You sent this question ahead of time, so I had some time to think about because that's a big question, right? Like some some people go to their jobs every day, and it's just a job where they show up and they do their work and they go home. For those of us who work in Student Affairs or work in, like, professions where we're using helping skills and helping skills and helping people, that's not what happens, right? Like you, you have to work really hard to not take your work home, to not be thinking about the students that you supported that day. I personally believe that everyone deserves to be safe on campus. I think that should just be like a blanket statement, right? Like you should be able to go to your classes, you should be able to go to a social event, you should be able to participate in your student organization, go to your dorm room and be safe, and not be at risk of being harmed. I think that should exist everywhere, but on this little bubble we have on campus, um, and I think part of that is teaching people how to respect one another, right? Like, that's a big thing that we teach, but also is taught in a lot of different ways. But I also think part of my job that's meaningful to me is empowering people to feel like they deserve to be respected, right? So there's a lot of people who maybe feel like they don't have the right, maybe the skills or the knowledge of like, how to say no, stand up for ourselves. And I think I've seen a lot of impact of like, empowering students that they have voice and they have worth, and they have the choice to say, "I don't like this. I don't want to do, this." And I don't think that's something that a lot of our students are told before they get to college. So that's what's most meaningful to me, is being able to say, "You deserve better than this. You deserve to be treated well. You should also treat people well." That's an equal part of it, right? Beginning to see students grow in their skills that will then serve them well, not only while they're at OSU but also once they leave and, like, go into the real world and don't have this, like, safety net that we have on a college campus.

Tanna: Yeah, and I really feel like the cause of 1 is 2 Many really, like, transcends sexual assault and sexual violence. I feel like it really brings into question the concept of consent and what that really means. 

[15:38]

Claire: Yeah, we do a LOT of programming about consent, right? Like, that's pivotal to sexual violence prevention and teaching about sexual assault. We even have shirts that say "OSU hearts consent" that people may have seen around campus. 

But I think when we actually, like, train about consent, we're talking more about, what are the skills that help you get consent, right? Because a lot of people, when they think about consent, it's like this end goal, like we're trying to get consent, because if we don't, that's a sexual assault, right? That's an important way to think about it. But in the past, people have not talked about, what are the things that it takes to get to consent? And that's a- that's hard. That's the hard stuff, knowing what consent is and what's not. Like if we just put up an example on the screen and said, "What is consent?" People can do that, easily. What they struggle with is, how do we get to consent? So we've really kind of, like, backpedaled a lot and talked about, like, what is communication? What is boundaries? How do you hear the word “no”? Like, it sucks to hear the word no. Like, if you ask for consent and they say no, doesn't feel good, but it doesn't mean you can push through that. And so we do some like, exercises and examples about, like, we are using consent all day, every day, in our everyday lives, right? So I use an example of, like, a Pete's Posse dog in the union. Most people say, "Can I pet your dog?" or "Can I pet-" you know, if you know the dog's name, whatever that's asking for consent to pet the dog. We're not saying, "Do I have consent to pet your dog?" Because that's weird, and we don't do that, but you're practicing that skill. Same thing of, like, you guys asked me if you could record this, right? If you could use a camera, I could have said, "No, I'm not comfortable with that." And you would have said, "Okay, that's fine," right? That's that's practicing consent. We just not, don't call it that.

[17:11]

Annaliese: Yeah, thank you so much for the work that you do. [Claire: yea!] It's really cool to hear about even ways that I've seen this organization impact my own transition to college, like I did have to learn about the four Ds. [Claire: Yeah.] And I just think that that's something that kind of goes understated, like how important that is.

Claire: Yeah, well, it's really easy to say, “I'm not gonna need it, like that's not gonna apply to me,” and the statistics are probably true that it's not gonna happen to everybody, or the statistics back that up, that that's true: that it's not going to happen to everybody. But the likelihood that you will encounter someone who does need your help, or the likelihood that you will, maybe not even while you're at college, but later find out that someone that's really close to you experience something and being able to support them, intervene, do something, people don't go into this mindset of like, “well, I'm going to need this information for myself someday,” but if we can switch that mindset to “I need this information so I can help somebody else one day.” That's what is super helpful, and that's what we base most of our messaging on.

Tanna: So is there anything you feel like you would want students to know? 

Claire: Yeah, so I think, and I kind of alluded to this already, but the entire 1 is 2 Many program is run by myself as a full time coordinator, so I'm here 40 hours a week, and then I have a graduate teaching assistant who's here part time, and we will not be having a graduate assistant in the next year, and so it'll go down to a full time coordinator and some interns, potentially, right? So because of that, even if we had a bigger team, right, we cannot be the only people who care about sexual violence prevention on campus.

I can take a megaphone every day and walk around campus and tell people that sexual assault is bad, but unless they care about it and they want to do something about it, my voice isn't going to matter as much as if we're getting like that widespread attention across campus. So I think we talk sometimes about, like a culture shift, like, it's not just “okay, we can all agree that sexual assault is bad,” like, “we can all agree that rape is bad, that rapists are bad people,” right? Like that's a general… most people agree with that, right? But we have to engage all of us to think about, like, the little things that are happening, right? So calling out sexist or inappropriate jokes, calling out when our friend is acting inappropriate or saying they're going to do something inappropriate, that's not necessarily what we would think of when we think about sexual assault, but those are the things that we have to stop and intervene to just stop that, like rape culture and think things are happening on campus. So I think that's something I would urge everyone to think about, is like, what are the things they can do in their everyday life that that contribute to this sexual assault prevention on campus? 

And it doesn't mean they have to become a prevention ambassador. Doesn't mean they have doesn't mean they have to intern with us. It doesn't mean they have to be a student victim advocate. They just have to do something right in their everyday life. And I think something I would also argue is that sexual violence doesn't just have an impact on the victim and the alleged, right: so the person who was impacted, the person who did the harm. Those are not the only two people who are impacted. There are witnesses that might be impacted, bystanders that might have been impacted. I go to you and I report to you that person might be impacted. So I think we can't just like, go exist throughout our lives, acting like sexual violence isn't occurring because it hasn't happened to us directly. We should exist in this world like it is happening around us, and we should be mad about that, right? We should exist in this world like we are mad that sexual assault is happening. We want to do everything we can to stop it. But if we pretend it's not, it's really easy to say. "Not an issue, doesn't affect me", and we might not do anything to change some of those things. And, also, sexual violence doesn't have a specific demographic or gender or race or class or anything like that. It exists on all levels, and so I challenge people to challenge their own assumptions about sexual violence so that they can positively create change on campus. 

[20:56]

Annaliese: Yeah, well thank you so much, because that information is really important to have. And it was really nice to be more informed about the organization 1 is 2 Many. 

Claire: We're happy to share about it. I will tell anybody that will listen [laughs] about 1 is 2 Many.

Annaliese: Well, hopefully lots of people…

Claire: Lots of people, yeah!

Tanna: It was really nice to interview you. Thank you for volunteering to let us interview you. That was so nice.

Annaliese: Yes, thank you.

Claire: Of course, yeah, thank you for asking me.

Tanna: Thank you to our listeners for tuning in and for doing what you can to put yourselves out there to show the warm heart of OSU. And remember, boots: good pokes, good faith.

[21:30]

[Outro: OSU band plays, fades out]