Kim Webb, the administrator tasked with issues of sexual assault prevention and education on campus, is planning a sexual assault response team and a bystander intervention program.

Recently hired as the first assistant director for sexual assault and community health services, Webb emphasized the need to bring in the larger community to address sexual violence.

“This is a community health issue, and you can’t deal with it in a vacuum,” Webb said. “And although my programs and my education will be really geared toward Wash. U. students, I think we have to address it as a community. The greater community has to acknowledge it as an issue as well.”

Webb’s appointment to the post in June followed years of discussion within the Washington University community on the need for a sexual assault prevention coordinator. Though she hasn’t implemented any programs yet this year, Webb said she hopes to create a sexual assault response team, consisting of student organizations, the police departments in the area and local community organizations such as the YWCA Sexual Assault Response Team. The team would consist of people who would be the first to respond to victims.

Webb hopes her bystander intervention program will happen in the next six months. The program would teach people how to identify instances of sexual assault and deal with them.

“Hopefully, the bystander intervention training is going to give us the skills to address it in a way that feels comfortable,” Webb said. “So maybe we see something, and instead of going into a dissertation about why it’s wrong, it might give us the skills to say, I don’t really like that and to stand up a little more.”

The bystander intervention program goes back to the philosophy that sexual assault is a community health issue., she said.

“It treats sexual violence as a community health issue and that it looks at all of us as a bystander—that we all have a role to play, that it affects all of us,” Webb said. “So it teaches us to recognize when we should intervene, and then it gives us the skills to intervene in a way that is safe and comfortable. We can talk about these issues, but they feel really overwhelming if we don’t have something tangible we can do to make a difference.”

Webb envisions the initial training will start with a small group of influential and well-networked people that would be able to impact a greater audience.

Junior Becca Craig is Student Union Senate’s liaison with Webb and has been immensely impressed with Webb’s efforts.

“Within a minute of meeting Kim, it is almost impossible to miss the amount of passion and dedication she [brings] to improving the Wash. U. community,” Craig said. “Not only that, but she wants to distribute her assistance beyond the Wash. U. bubble, reaching out to the larger St. Louis area.”

Other students’ responses were more tempered.

“I think that the bystander intervention program is a great way to start the conversation on campus about the shared responsibility that we have as students for one another’s safety,” said junior Morgan DeBaun, student body president. “I am eager to learn more about the implementation of this program and how the sexual assault prevention coordinator will solicit meaningful feedback from students.”

But Webb said that she hopes that the University community embraces the bystander intervention strategy and that members of the community become bystanders who recognize when and how to intervene. “That’s going to change the culture,” Webb said.

Webb has a master’s degree in counseling psychology. Previously, Webb worked at the University of Missouri-Columbia as a health educator, primarily in the area of violence against women prevention and education. She has 15 years of experience working in non-profit or university settings.