Fraternity Peer Rape Education Project
The Fraternity Peer Rape Education Program is a collaborative effort among the Office of Women's Programs, Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs, and the Department of Gender and Women's Studies. It is a sexual violence prevention/education program that trains fraternity men at UIUC to become anti-rape educators. Students receive four total credit hours for a fall/spring two-semester course (GWS 199RW) that develops their skills to create, implement, and evaluate presentations to the men of their fraternity chapters.
Facilitators volunteer from fraternity chapters and complete the course, each facilitating two workshops to their own chapters and getting involved in one campus-wide initiative for sexual violence prevention. Often fraternity chapters are involved for consecutive years, while others become involved for the first time. Since FPREP's inception, 53 men from 18 fraternities have completed the course and facilitated anti-rape workshops with their fraternity.
Students in the program perform needs assessments on their fraternities and identify specific strengths and weaknesses to be addressed in their spring workshops. Topics vary from supporting a survivor of sexual assault to challenging rape-supportive jokes. In self-evaluations of workshops, FPREP members report that their fraternity brothers gained knowledge and awareness from these dialogues.
Additionally, each FPREP facilitator is responsible for administering an awareness-raising activity as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month (April). Men in FPREP assist other student organizations, such as Men Against Sexual Violence, and the Office of Women's Programs in distributing ribbons and pledges to men, holding protests of men's violence against women, and participating on panels of men challenging sexual violence and racism. In addition to facilitating workshops, FPREP facilitators gain experience as community organizers, involvement in a community-engagement activities, expansion of their existing event-planning skills, while also understanding the role of public awareness in rape prevention, opportunities to discuss challenging interlocking oppressions, working as allies to women, developing positive relationships with men, and the impact of homophobia on relationships with men and women, and about the ways men can work to create change. FPREP alumni are encouraged to integrate into new FPREP student training and become connected with existing prevention education through Office of Women's Programs and student organizations.
The Office of Women's Programs has provided assistance to other individuals and organizations seeking to learn more about or implement their own sexual violence prevention program with fraternity men. The FPREP program provides information and support to other universities and colleges on effective intervention strategies to engage men as apart of the solution to rape on campus.
Fraternity Peer Rape Education Program (FPREP) is offered through GWS 199RW as a two semester (fall and spring), 2-credit hour course that trains fraternity men as peer rape educators to their own chapters as part of the FPREP program. Prospective students should contact Ross Wantland at 333-3137 to set up an interview.
