Michael Ayalon

Sexual violence is a serious and complex public health problem. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, about 97,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 report experiencing alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape each year. We focus on preventing sexual violence perpetration before it happens to achieve the greatest impact. Our prevention strategies are consistent with best practices developed with the Sexual Assault Center in Nashville, Tennessee and are theory-based. From the individual perspective, you will build consent, bystander intervention, and healthy relationship skills with an evidence-informed interactive session. From an organizational perspective, you will engage campus leadership to promote a campus culture of consent, safety, and respect. From a community perspective, you will see initiatives taken to strengthen and support enforcement, response, and reporting on and off campus.

By reading any newspaper across the country, you'll see that hazing continues to affect Greek organizations, sports teams, even the band. It is threatening our very existence. According to the National Study of Student Hazing, 55% of college students have been hazed, and 47% were hazed BEFORE they came to college. The unfortunate part is that 9 out of 10 students didn't consider themselves hazed. You often read about the hazing incidents that cause physical injury (or even death). What about the mental aspects of hazing? What are the ramifications over a lifetime to our students? It's important for you to understand why hazing happens in our organizations. You will review the early history of hazing in society and determine what contributes to the hazing mentality such as Bandura's Theory on moral disengagement and Cimino's sociological factors that contribute to hazing. You will discuss the hazing laws in your state and show hazing incidents that have been highlighted in the media.

Were you thrown into your position in your Fraternity, Sorority or company with little training or knowledge of the position? One of the biggest problems you face is that you are constantly reinventing the wheel, and then repeat the same mistakes made in the past because of a lack of officer transition and training in your organization. All of your effective recruitment techniques, fundraising programs, scholarship initiatives, risk management procedures, and other organizational memory is lost when people leave and you may not effectively be teaching their replacements. You will learn how to identify and train future leaders, ensure successful officer and job transition, and properly set new goals for the upcoming year based on best practices from over 125 chapters in North America, including student leadership training and retreats. You will understand what effective committee structure looks like and why that’s important. You will review effective meeting and communication.