Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead stated earlier this year to the Senate Armed Services Committee that sexual assault is incompatible with Navy core values and that prevention and education continues to be a priority Navy-wide.
It continues to be a high priority at the Naval Academy, where the Sexual Harassment and Assault Prevention and Education (SHAPE) program provides prevention education to the 4,500-member Brigade of Midshipmen.
The program is designed to foster an environment of equality in which sexual harassment and assault are unlikely to occur. It consists of a four-year curriculum that uses empirically-based prevention methods to examine individual attitudes and behavior as well as the wider culture, including an examination of gender socialization, conformity, and societal attitudes toward consent.
The program focuses on bystander intervention, which is a widely accepted means of prevention education.
“This approach allows students to look out for the people around them and step in when they see something that could be potentially harmful,” said Karen Gentile, director of education and services of the academy’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) program.
SHAPE is executed during the academic year and consists of both peer education sessions and supplemental presentations. The curriculum consists of four peer education contact hours for each class of midshipmen to attend, supplemented by an additional speaker or presentation each year.
Peer educators are a key component to the program. They facilitate discussions about sexual harassment and assault to empower midshipmen with increased awareness and bystander intervention skills.
“The peer educators are really the ones who make it happen. They are a very dedicated group,” said Barbara Cyr-Roman, SAPR training specialist.
The 72 peer educators had to apply for the position, a process that includes an interview, a written essay and recommendations from company officers, said Cyr-Roman.
“We try hard to recruit midshipmen who firmly believe in what the program is trying to do,” said Cyr-Roman. “We hold them to a very high standard. They do two weeks of professional training during the summer, which is a very intense training as they learn all of the SHAPE program curriculum, as well as additional information on sexual assault and sexual violence in the culture.”
The midshipmen involved find the experience rewarding, said Midshipman 1st Class Sara Brown, brigade SHAPE operations officer.
“I love to help others, and my hope is to prevent something bad from happening to anyone, especially to the people under my command,” said Brown. “As a leader, you can step up and stop this from happening in your command and among your peers. It is about discussion and dialogue.”
“I am definitely a better person now,” she said. “It’s really about looking out for someone else other than you.”
The goal is to help midshipmen develop their moral character before they go out into the fleet as leaders, where they might have to stand up for a person who is vulnerable, Cyr-Roman added.
The training is mandatory, and the coordinators do their best to make the classes interesting.
“We try to get them comfortable with peer education, so they can have an open discussion and be able to share independent thoughts,” said Cyr-Roman. “We have discussions about broader cultural context, language, the way they treat and view each other, and their roles as male and female.”
The program also serves as a tool for midshipmen to enhance their public speaking skills and leadership, Cyr-Roman said.
The program works closely with other faculty to ensure the mids receive consistent messages.
“We try to find out what they are learning, so we can integrate, supplement and reflect that in the SHAPE program,” said Gentile.
The idea when initially developing the program in 2005 was to come up with something unique to the Naval Academy, said Gentile.
“We wanted to create a program that wasn’t used somewhere else in any college,” said Gentile. “The goal was to really understand midshipmen life and the unique aspects of it, to add to their knowledge of the prevention program they already had. We came up with the SHAPE program from all of those efforts.”
