Coalition Misses Grant Deadline

After working toward a $200,000 federal grant to combat sexual violence on college campuses, members of the Coalition Against Sexual Violence missed yesterday’s application deadline.

Coalition members said they were unable to agree with administrators on the appropriate University body to sponsor the application and administer the funds.

The grant, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Violence Against Women Office, would have required official backing, as the government stipulates that the application must come from Massachusetts universities—not from student groups.

“[The application] was not submitted for a couple of reasons,” coalition member Sarah B. Levit-Shore ’04 said. “One tough spot was that the University wasn’t ready yet to go with the structure we had created and the grant required.”

The main problem, Levit-Shore said, came with the question of how the grant would be administered.

Their application proposed that the $200,000 would fund both a review of Harvard’s current sexual violence education and implementation of the suggested changes. The money would also go to better organize the College’s resources on sexual violence and—as a requirement of the grant—sexual violence education for members of Harvard’s Administrative Board.

In other colleges that have received this grant, Levit-Shore said, the task of allocating the grant’s funds and monitoring activities is given to the head of the college’s women’s center.

Since Harvard does not have a women’s center, coalition members suggested Harvard’s women’s studies program as an alternative.

“We tried to think of other places to house the grant, but finding some place that both our organization and the University agreed with was difficult,” Levit-Shore said.

Although coalition members had finished the application, she added that meetings with the necessary administrators caused her to realize it would be impossible to submit the application this year.

Levit-Shore said coalition members were not even able to meet with Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 until yesterday.

Members of coalition sent the completed application to a number of different parties, including Judy G. Fox, acting assistant dean of the College, and members of the Harvard University Police Department.

“[They were] really great about meeting with us and expressing doubts where they had them and pointing us in directions where we could work to improve the application, but the message we got was that the way the things happen at Harvard is usually through internal change,” Levit-Shore said.

“I think our interactions have been friendly and constructive and I hope that the effort that has been put into the project thus far will prove to be worthwhile,” Lewis wrote in an e-mail.

But Levit-Shore said the group needed more time to complete their application in a manner agreeable to both the group and administrators.

“I guess it became clear as the deadline approached that some of the larger concept issues would not get worked through in time,” she said. “It wasn’t so much a formal declaration in either direction. It was clear given our particular views and the time constraints the University was not ready to commit to the grant.”

Although this year’s deadline has now passed, coalition members said they plan to try again next year if the grant is still offered.

“We are not sure that the grant funding will be available next year which is why we worked so hard to get it done this year,” Levit-Shore said.

She said that although not applying for the grant is a disappointment to the group, the grant was not the only item on its agenda. She suggested Harvard itself could fund the programs coalition is seeking.

“Harvard has a lot of money and resources at its disposal. This grant was a way to get funding for changes without Harvard having to dip into its own money, but Harvard doesn’t necessarily need outside funding to make these changes,” Levit-Shore said.

—Staff writer Nalina Sombuntham can be reached at sombunth@fas.harvard.edu.