September 2007 The first Take Back the News College Writing Project was completed in April 2007. This project not only reached each of its participating students in profound ways, yielding emotional and academic growth beyond our expectations, but also helped catalyze a month-long campus-wide campaign to raise awareness of issues surrounding sexual and domestic violence in our community. Now, we're working closely with campus administrators and the Rochester Rape Crisis Service to update all aspects of the project, hoping to apply what we learned over the past year to the project's future development and well-being. Accordingly, we've decided to run the project at MCC during the Spring 2008 semester before publishing and distributing our materials. Our goal is to offer interested faculty and administrators user-friendly tools to realize a long-term program that can transform their students' lives. We understand that to do this, the program must be effective, safe, and easy to implement. We anticipate reaching this goal by the end of next summer. Finally, we want to take the time to thank three important organizations who have showed significant support to this project. Both the Office of Student Services at MCC and MCC's local chapter of the American Association of Women in Community Colleges (AAWCC) have generously donated funds to provide an end-of-workshop celebration and personal gifts to our students, demonstrating to our students that the work they had done over the previous five weeks was recognized and validated by members of their community. And, of course, the Rochester Rape Crisis Service has donated both its time and expertise to this project from the outset, without which we could not have continued. More information to come.... March 2007 The College Writing Project held its first worskhop with five students from Monroe Community College. The worskhop component of the Project will end in the beginning of April, at which time students will be given the opportunity to publish their stories in a special print publication and/or on the Take Back the News website and to give voice to their stories during a special segment of Rochester's second annual Speak Out, hosted by the college. We're excited to share these next weeks with this extraordinary group of students and look forward, more than anything, to working closely with them and to learning and growing together. During late spring, we will assess the Project and construct prototype materials to be distributed to interested colleges around the country. More information to come.... September 2006 After gaining institutional support, the next step towards a successful College Writing Project is gaining community and faculty support. To do this, Take Back the News has partnered with the Rochester Rape Crisis Service, who is helping our project leaders construct and implement a screening process for participating students. Also, Take Back the News and the Rochester Rape Crisis Service are co-hosting a training session for faculty ambassadors to the project. In addition to detailing the responsibilities of faculty ambassadors, this training session will inform faculty about different options for responding to sexual assault disclosures in general. Once our ambassadors are in place, students who disclose of their own volition will be funneled into a three-tiered screening process. By embarking on this screening process, students will be integrated into a community network that can help them heal, even if they are not yet ready to participate in the College Writing Project. Overall, even at this stage, a Take Back the News College Writing Project can contribute to a culture of emotional and physical safety across campus. More information to come…. April 2006 Take Back the News' College Writing Project is underway at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York. We chose to launch the prototype at MCC for three reasons: (1) according to the FBI, the rate of recorded forcible rapes in Rochester is 1.9 times the national average, calling attention to the severity of the problem in this city, in particular; (2) it seems important to launch the prototype at a community college given the material connection between community colleges and the communities in which they exist; and (3) because the College Writing Project is designed to be initiated by a faculty member or college administrator, it makes sense for us to launch the project's prototype at the college where one of our Board Members is employed in this capacity. The first step in launching a College Writing Project must be gaining full institutional support. Whereas similar projects tend to exist in resistance to a college’s administration, the College Writing Project aims to create a unified front—a fruitful collaboration of students, faculty, and staff—so that we can work together to create a culture of change. It’s time for college administrations, and not just college students, to Take Back the News. As such, Maria Brandt (English Professor and Take Back the News Board Member) and Elizabeth Johnston (English Professor and feminist scholar) have worked together to create a steering committee at MCC. The English/Philosophy Department, the Academic Vice President, the Health and Wellness Center, the Counseling Center, Public Safety, and Student Services all have offered their full support—and we anticipate the list of active participants in this project will continue to grow. Our first steering committee meeting will be in May 2006, and the project itself will be launched in Spring 2007. More information to come….