Sarah Surface, '16, vice-president of One Less; video interview

Niki Afsar and Tierney Vial

Take Back the Archive

Academic year 2014-2015

Video, 11:04 minutes

Sarah Surface, ’16
Vice-president of One Less, an all-female sexual assault education group that advocates for survivors.
External chair, Sexual Violence Prevention Coalition (SVPC).
Board of Directors, SARA (Sexual Assault Resource Agency, Charlottesville, VA).

0:19 How has sexual assault advocacy changed during your time at UVa?
“Advocacy has become a lot more visible at UVa, but still has a ways to go.”

1:30 How have responses to sexual assault changed within the UVa community?
“I’ve seen a change in commitment to prevention, although I think again we have a long ways to go. A lot of times UVa talks about prevention in terms of safety or risk reduction, so, better lighting, more security, etc.” What we need is more education that “gets at the cultural norms that perpetuate assaults.”

2:36 What advice do you have for students who want to get involved in sexual assault advocacy?
“The #1 thing I would say, especially after this year, is to develop a plan for self-care.”

3:26 What is a high priority area for improvement in UVa’s response to sexual assault?
“Engagement.”
Need to engage “the ‘typical student’ who is unsure of how to help out.”

5:09 Can you talk about student reactions to the events of the 2014-2015 school year?
“When the Rolling Stone article broke, and then all the details began to unravel and then it was eventually discredited, what we felt was emotional exhaustion times, like, a million. To know that the work you’d done at the university for three years might have been turned backwards was . . .”

9:11 Can you talk about your interactions with students through One Less?
“What’s really powerful for me is, you go into a room to do a presentation for One Less and you ask everyone to close their eyes and you say, ‘raise your hand if you or anyone you know has ever been affected by sexual violence.’ And I’ve never been in a room where less than half of the hands go up.” That experience “makes it hard for me to think about how people don’t think they should be involved” with advocating for survivors.