Content warning: This column contains references to sexual violence.

SHARE is available to all members of the Yale community who are dealing with sexual misconduct of any kind, including sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking, intimate partner violence and more. Counselors are available any time, day or night, at the 24/7 hotline: (203) 432-2000. 

Yale has been my home — metaphorically and literally — for the last five years. In that time, I’ve had the privilege of making lifelong friends, falling in love and out of it, changing career paths, making music and viewing the world through new lenses. I’ve also struggled, and some of my most difficult memories here have been seeing the impact that sexual harm has on communities and individuals. 

In every challenging moment, I’ve witnessed how Yale students show up for others. Every struggle I’ve faced here has been ameliorated by others’ love and their willingness to support me. Over the last five years, I’ve learned more than anything that the way our communities respond to harm matters. Community is made up of minuscule interactions. Having strong and accessible resources is important — and so are the daily conversations we have, the follow-up texts we send, the ways we learn and hold each others’ stories. 

When I look back at my time at Yale, these experiences have informed some of my proudest moments: taking the time to support others, working to prioritize love and kindness in friend groups and organizations and helping the Communication & Consent Educator program develop a more community-based approach when it comes to survivor support. How are Yale students supporting their friends and loved ones when they experience harm? How are those conversations — and, tangentially, our friendships — shaping how our culture responds to sexual harm? These small puzzle pieces create our culture, which works alongside Yale’s more formal support resources to create our support systems. 

This month, we have a chance to show up again for each other and to reflect honestly about the community we are building at Yale. The Yale Sexual Climate Survey provides us and Yale with information about the types of sexual experiences — including harmful ones — that are happening on campus. The survey also asks us about our community of care, including bystander intervention and awareness of support resources. 

The data from this survey are shared publicly, an important step towards transparency in a field that is still under-studied and burdened by myth. These data can help to increase the resources Yale puts towards preventing and responding to sexual harm. Since the previous survey, Yale has expanded prevention programming and developed new, more holistic support resources such as SHARE’s trauma-informed yoga practice. Most importantly, these data allow us to understand how far we’ve come and what work still needs to be done.

But these data don’t appear spontaneously. We have to be willing to put time into responding to the survey, and as a result, devote time to our community. In 2019, 54 percent of Yale College students responded to this survey, a testament to the care we show each other. In 2024, we can reach or even surpass this impressive statistic. 

The survey is completely confidential and takes around 20 minutes to complete. I encourage you to take it if you are comfortable doing so. You can access the survey on the Yale Title IX website. 

By gathering accurate and representative information, we can continue creating a community of care, together. 

JOSEPHINE HOLUBKOV is a senior in Timothy Dwight College studying Linguistics and is a CCE. Contact her at josephine.holubkov@yale.edu.