More than two dozen 11th-grade boys from Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School left the Island at sunrise Tuesday for a two-day retreat at Camp Burgess in Sandwich, where they engaged in deep conversations about sexual consent, pornography and what a bystander can do to help someone who is being threatened, exploited or hurt.
Eight 11th-grade girls also took part in the workshop, sharing their own perspectives on sexual aggression and listening to the boys express their experiences as young males.
“The boys have said how impactful it is . . . to see how systemic misogyny affects all the women in their lives, including their classmates,” school psychologist Jennifer Russell told the Gazette during a campus visit last week.
Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School is thought to be the only school currently offering this program, called SWEAR, which stands for Stand With Everyone Against Rape. The program was created a decade ago by a group of male students at Dover-Sherborn High School after a friend was drugged and raped in her freshman year of college.
Dover-Sherborn’s program is no longer available, but Martha’s Vineyard has been offering SWEAR training since 2015, guidance counselor Amy Lilavois said.
Six 12th-graders who took part in last year’s SWEAR program agreed to speak with the Gazette, which interviewed three 17- and 18-year-old boys last week and three 17-year-old girls on Monday.
“It feels like what we really learned there was how to stick up for other people,” said Caiden Gardner, who signed up for SWEAR because most of his family is female.
“I have four sisters, a mom and a bunch of aunties,” said Mr. Gardner, a student in the high school’s Project Vine alternative program who also has played football, wrestled and ran track.
“There’s so many different groups that I’m a part of and . . . the reality of it is, you don’t have real [social] power in any of those groups unless you know what to say to stick up for other people,” he said.
That includes shutting down coarse banter about girls and women, Mr. Gardner said.
“There’s situations where you’re like, ‘Okay guys, don’t say this, cause it’s similar to locker-room talking,’” he said.
“It may not be the locker room, but it’s the same idea,” he added.
Rodeo Purves-Langer, who captains the school’s cross-country team, said locker-room talk was one of the reasons he signed up for SWEAR.
“I really wanted to know how to be an advocate for what SWEAR stands for, and how to kind of eliminate locker-room talk and set a better example for the underclassmen,” he said.
Kaua De Assis, captain of the boys swim team, said the SWEAR training has made an impact.
“Most of us, like I’ve seen in those situations, have stepped up and tried to be active bystanders during locker-room talk and stuff like that,” he said.
“We’re not the same as we were before,” said Mr. De Assis, who told the Gazette he signed up for SWEAR after hearing from friends who went through the program. “I wanted to protect the women in my life, and I want to help and be part of the change.”
“What I’ve taken away from it is that we, as men, need to be better, and that I’ve learned many lessons that I will use for the rest of my life,” he added.
Mr. Purves-Langer said he feels better prepared for college after the SWEAR training.
“[I have] the skills to handle certain situations which I will, sadly, most likely face,” he said.
While the SWEAR program is geared primarily toward boys, girls play an important role in the two-day workshop.
“Kind of our main job going on the retreat was to represent all women,” Avery Mulvey said.
“We went there to listen and to learn, mostly . . . and to provide guidance when needed,” said Ms. Mulvey, who was joined in the interview by classmates Arianna Edelman and Natalie Wambui.
All three young women said they had gained empathy for their male peers as a result of listening to their testimonies during the retreat.
“I didn’t really know to the extent that men are taught that they can’t really show emotion, and how large of an impact that has,” Ms. Edelman said.
The boys’ words made a deep impression, Ms. Wambui said.
“Just listening to all the guys share their experiences on what they believe manhood is, and their experience of sexual assault or something like that — I felt more empathetic when I came out of SWEAR,” she said.
Discussions of pornography, which has become nearly omnipresent in the digital era, were among the retreat’s more awkward encounters, the girls said.
“We talked a lot about porn and the culture that that brings, so that was difficult,” Ms. Mulvey said.
The retreat’s final topic, Ms. Lilavois said, is the Rape Culture Pyramid, a visual guide patterned after the USDA Food Pyramid that moves from a wide base of bigotries through a narrowing set of escalations, with an ending sequence of coercion, drugging, rape and death at the pyramid’s apex.
After that, she said, the discussions turn to ally-ship and how to continue the SWEAR values once everyone returns to their everyday life.
Not every boy comes back a changed man, according to the girls who spoke with the Gazette, who said they still hear locker-room talk from some of the participants in last year’s retreat.
“That was disappointing, after the amount of time we spent talking about how serious a problem it is,” Ms. Mulvey said.
But all three girls said they believed even the worst-behaved SWEAR alumni would still step up if they saw someone at risk.
“I’d like to believe that they do really care,” Ms. Wambui said.
SWEAR has become so popular at the high school, Ms. Lilavois said, that not everyone who applies can take part in the off-Island retreat. After reaching 40 boys a few years ago and finding that too many, she and guidance counselor Matt Malowski scaled back the group.
This year, they made room for nearly 30 boys and eight girls.
That still left some 30 applicants unable to go off-Island with the group, but Ms. Lilavois said they are all welcome to take part in other SWEAR activities: a half-day workshop in August and four Saturday retreats in the academic year, as well as monthly get-togethers during the school week.
As part of their SWEAR commitment, the boys who took part in this year’s two-day retreat will follow up their workshop experiences with a presentation to the MVRHS junior and senior classes. There will also be opportunities for smaller group discussions about consent and bystander behavior, and health class presentations in collaboration with CONNECT to End Violence, a program of Martha’s Vineyard Community Services.
Some of the students will visit middle-school students, and earlier this year Mr. Gardner and Mr. Purves-Langer spoke at a high school committee meeting, testifying to the program’s value.
No public money goes into the SWEAR program, Ms. Lilavois said. It is supported by grants from local foundations and the Martha’s Vineyard Youth Task Force.
Ms. Edelman said she’d like to see the program available at other schools as well.
“Even people who aren’t a part of SWEAR, they hear the presentations and it gets them thinking,” she said.
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