The Sexual Assault Resource Team (SART) is a new club that aims to destigmatize issues surrounding sexual violence and educate students on these issues.
The club was created in partnership with the Northern Colorado-based Sexual Assault Victim Advocate Center and is primarily ran by counselor Peter Marino (staff).
“The SART program at our school is designed to educate students on, like, sexual assault prevention and resources and things like that and help clear up the blurriness of what is appropriate and what’s inappropriate and what actually sexual assault is and different types of sexual violence,” Marino said.
The club came about when SAVA reached out to WHS to see if it would be interested in starting the program.
“SAVA reached out to us through our self-defense and conditioning class and they asked if it was something that we would want to do,” Marino explained. “So we put the application out there last year and then we had five or six students who wanted to do it and got trained and started presenting.”
Students receive trainings to prepare them for the presentations. “With the SART training there was an hour pre-training, kind of letting students know what the whole program would be like to see if they still wanted to do it,” Marino said. “And then there was a full day, six- to seven-hour training on what the presentations are like and going through a lot of the material and the definitions and those kinds of things. And then an hour post-training just to wrap things up.”
It is important for students to learn about these topics in a school setting. “I feel like too many people go through bad experiences and don’t have a name for what happened to them,” Allison Ayotte (10), a member of the team, said. “I think that’s really important to allow them to feel validated in their feelings and get the help they need.”
These topics are important as students begin to mature socially and may begin to enter into these types of relationships.
“Since we’re all getting older …. We’re understanding our society better and, like, our friendships, and we’re getting new relationships, and I think it’s important to know good boundaries,” Keegan Miller (10), another member of the team, said.
With topics as serious as these, some students are not as receptive to the presentations. Ayotte explained, “Especially with freshmen, they can get uncomfortable and then not take it seriously or be disruptive, and that’s really hard to overcome without being, like, too disciplinary, you know?”
The team hopes to expand the program in the following years. “I feel like a big goal would be to grow the program and also be able to do the senior presentations and the middle school presentations, because I think the senior ones will be really important,” Miller said.
The program is currently taking applications for next year’s team.
“Definitely give it a try. I think it’s a great opportunity to build some leadership skills and, you know, if that’s an important topic that you want to advocate for,” Marino said, “you’ll definitely get to know more people and you yourself will probably become a good resource for students in the building.”
