Tanvi Jayaraman Named Newman Civic Fellow

Tanvi Jayaraman, a junior at Stanford University, has been named a 2015 Newman Civic Fellow, a national award sponsored by Campus Compact, a coalition of more than 1,100 college and university presidents committed to fulfilling the public purpose of higher education. The award, which recognizes the next generation of civic leaders and social problem solvers, is named for the late Frank Newman, a co-founder of Campus Compact and founding member of the National Advisory Board of Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service.

Jayaraman is one of 201 college students nationwide being recognized for their commitment to addressing social issues in their communities. She was nominated by Stanford President John Hennessy in part for her work at Stanford on bystander intervention as a tool to help prevent sexual assault. She organized an interactive theater event for Stanford students to educate them about speaking up for their peers to prevent sexual assault, and has written on the subject for the National Campus Leadership Council and The Huffington Post.

Jayaraman became interested in helping women and girls overcome gender-based obstacles during high school. As a 10th-grader, she volunteered at a special needs school in Coimbatore, India. She observed the differences in vocational training between boys and girls—the girls were guided into crafts and domestic help, while the boys were given instruction in computers and technology—and produced a documentary on the subject for school.

At Stanford, Jayaraman participated in a trip to Nicaragua through Impact Abroad, a Haas Center program that sponsors three- to eight-week service-learning trips overseas, and she interned at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. She also took part in a 10-month health advocacy research project on domestic violence through Stanford’s pediatrics department, where she spoke to women recovering from domestic violence about their need for access to health care, advice on fitness and nutrition, and programs for their children.

As stories of sexual assault on university campuses across the U.S. started to become more prevalent in the media, Jayaraman was struck that, statistically, more than one woman in her circle of friends was likely to become a victim of sexual assault while at college. She organized an event this past November with an interactive theater troupe from Cal State Long Beach, interACT, known for success with their bystander intervention program at other universities and with the U.S. Navy. Provost John Etchemendy and Vice Provost for Student Affairs Greg Boardman co-sponsored the event, which more than 280 students attended. Students also participated in surveys about the event’s effectiveness, and while Jayaraman is still compiling the survey results, early indications are that students felt significantly more likely to try to prevent a potential sexual assault after attending the program.

Jayaraman would like to continue her work in sexual assault prevention at Stanford. “Stanford isn’t just my school—it’s where I live and where my friends live,” she said. “I should dedicate the same amount of time and energy to this community as I do to my academic work.”

Jayaraman was also recently awarded the Donald A. Strauss Scholarship through the Haas Center, a $10,000 grant to pursue a yearlong public service project. She plans to pilot a peer counseling student group, Stand Up Coalition, in 2015-16, in collaboration with the Office of Sexual Assault & Relationship Abuse Education & Response (SARA) and the Title IX Office at Stanford. Members of the student group will be required to take a new course in the fall co-directed by Professor Marcia Stefanick and Angela Exson of the SARA office on the health and medical impacts of sexual assault. She hopes that the program will serve as a model for other universities in the future.

“Prevention education for sexual assault is complicated; but fresh, creative, and engaging initiatives to educate the community have the potential to change the world,” said Jayaraman. “My desire is to start a deeper dialogue about sexual assault within our student population and an upstander culture of love and compassion for each other.”

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