The Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Education Center has doubled its staff and relocated to larger offices over the past year as part of continuing efforts to expand its visibility on campus.
SHARE hired two new full-time staff members in recent months: Assistant Director Jennifer Czinz, who officially joined the SHARE staff in July, and SHARE Associate Alison Doernberg ’99, who began last week. The center moved into a larger location on the lower level of Yale Health in September, a three-office space designed and constructed specifically for the organization, which now has four staff members. The primary focus of the center will continue to be “responding to students,” but SHARE hopes to offer more programs and events in the future that involve a larger portion of the campus, said SHARE Director Carole Goldberg.
“We’d like to be well-known — the first thought that comes to someone’s mind with issues of sexual misconduct,” Goldberg said. “We want to offer a strong mix [of first-response services and other programming] and a larger staff will allow us to do that.”
Yale has become a “pioneer” in providing sexual misconduct resources for students, Goldberg said, and other universities have approached the SHARE Center on multiple occasions to gather information on setting up sexual assault support and training programs.
SHARE is continuing to expand its consent and sensitivity training programs and offered 14 sessions at Yale’s graduate and professional schools for the first time last fall, Goldberg said.
Calls and visits to SHARE grew from 65 in the 2010–’11 academic year to 82 in the 2011–’12 academic year, according to SHARE Center reports. Goldberg and Czinz said they have spent the majority of their time taking calls from the SHARE hotline, but Doernberg’s arrival last week will allow them to be present at more events on campus.
“Having been both a student and worked in the admissions office, there are aspects of the culture and community that feel familiar and will allow me to [better] engage with the community,” Doernberg said.
SHARE aims to expand its campus presence in part by promoting its new location, staff members said. The area, designed by architect Rich Charney ARC ’76, is meant have a “home-like” feel and is designed to encourage walk-in visits, said Judith Madeux, deputy director of University Health Services. The center’s new offices are not shared with other departments and are more discreetly located than their previous offices on the first floor of Yale HEALTH, which Goldberg said makes the space more accessible and provides visitors with greater confidentiality.
The center will use its new offices to host events, such as its new support group for undergraduate victims of sexual assault which begins the second week of February. SHARE is also planning several other new programs in an effort to be more active on campus and has met with various student groups as well as members of the Department of Athletics, Goldberg said.
“SHARE’s always been very accessible over the phone but it removes one more barrier to have the physical space,” said Melanie Boyd ’90, assistant dean of student affairs, whose office addresses campus sexual climate issues.
The SHARE Center was founded in 2006.