Temple Student Government has partnered with Our Wave, a virtual community for survivors of sexual violence, to launch a collaborative communication forum on TSG’s website to extend Our Wave’s community to Temple.
The page, which launched on Feb. 6, allows Temple students access to Our Wave’s forum to talk to different survivors and post questions or prompts to the page. The website allows other survivors to find each other without identifying factors like names, age, social media handles or location.
“I think that healing looks different for everyone, and for a lot of people, they don’t know who to turn to when something happens,” said TSG President Ray Epstein. “A lot of people feel safer online because there’s this layer of anonymity and of ‘I can truly say and ask anything and be vulnerable, and nobody will attribute it to me in my real life.’”
The collaboration was announced in a social media post that included TSG, Our Wave and Student Advocates Against Sexual Assault, which Epstein is also the president of, to reach survivors on campus and spread awareness of the new resource, Epstein said.
Once a person submits something to the page, a member of the Our Wave team will review it for pure anonymity before posting it to the website.
In addition to finding a community, users of the site can also ask questions to experts. Our Wave works with a number of medical professionals, including Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners, who can answer questions from survivors with their clinical background.
“We have prompts to give [survivors] like, ‘Do you want to share a message of what healing means to you,’ or what hope means to you, as well as your free form narrative of your experience,” said Brendan Michaelsen, chief technology officer and co-founder of Our Wave.
Our Wave has instated volunteer coalitions at different universities in North Carolina, where the company is headquartered, but Temple is the first school the team has officially brought their services to.
The organization’s database is international and has collected and shared stories from survivors in 65 different countries, including the United States.
“You hear a lot that you’re not alone, that there are other people who experience this, but as much as people say it, something like Our Wave makes it feel very real,” said Emma Wentzel, accessibility and DEI coordinator for SAASA.
Our Wave was established during the height of the #MeToo movement and the United States Senate’s confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018 to help survivors that were contacting the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network and other national hotlines.
The goal of Our Wave is to help survivors understand healing and the “language of trauma” that many resources and centers use when a person seeks help, Michaelsen said.
Of all American graduate and undergraduate students, 13% experience rape or sexual abuse, according to RAINN.
TSG was able to bring Our Wave to Temple with the help of Laura Sinko, SAASA’s faculty advisor and the Director of Research and Survivor Support for Our Wave. At Temple, Sinko researches the healing journey after sexual assault and intimate partner violence. She is also a SANE at Drexel University’s Philadelphia Sexual Assault Response Center, which is the only emergency response clinic in Philadelphia.
“My dream is to have more sexual assault and dating violence-specific programs and supports for survivors in a more holistic way,” Sinko said. “I know we have counseling and things like that, but there’s so much more survivors need in their healing, and the more dedicated staff and attention we have to these issues, I think the better.”
SAASA helps connect students with local resources like WOAR Philadelphia Center Against Sexual Assault and PSARC.
“[WOAR] provides so many resources that SAASA will advertise, whether it’s tabling or [general body meetings] for students like knowing your Title IX rights, having the ability to file an [Office of Civil Rights] complaint if you need to, if you need to pursue legal action through PSARC,” Wentzel said.
TSG and SAASA also attempted to make other resources available through the university for survivors like Callisto, an encrypted platform that allows for survivors to be matched with others harmed by the same perpetrator. But after a year of advocating, Temple has declined to list Callisto as a resource, according to a SAASA Instagram post.
Callisto and It’s On Us, the national chapter that supports SAASA, also partner with Our Wave.
“I just want to emphasize that whether or not someone labels what they experience as assault, Our Wave is a place that’s still for you,” Sinko said. “Even if you’re unsure, if you’re feeling distressed, if you’re feeling harmed in any way, even if you’re not labeling yourself as a survivor, it’s still a place for anything under that spectrum.”
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