Fighting Toxic Masculinity One Meme at a Time

This project aimed to address toxic masculinity specifically within fraternities with a focus on consent. It is not uncommon for a girl in college to have either experienced or know another girl who has experienced roofying or sexual assault at a frat party. Addressing these issues and emphasizing the importance of consent is a crucial step towards facilitating a safer and healthier environment for all students.

Frat culture has historically been known to encourage toxic, violent “ultra-masculine” behavior, from initiations rights and hazing to other rituals. Some examples of common hazing practices include alcohol consumption, humiliation, isolation, sleep deprivation, and sex acts. Another issue with fraternity culture is sexual assault. Studies have found that men in fraternities are 3 times more likely to commit sexual assault than their student peers. (Our Wave, 2022).
While this may not exactly be the case at UMBC, it’s important for students to know and understand the dangers of such toxic behavior and the importance of consent, as well as be aware of healthier ways to express themselves and connect with their frat brothers.

Our goal was to address these issues in a non-confrontational way in order to reach those in fraternities and encourage consent with the use of relatable and lighthearted memes and images. We decided to create an instagram account to reach and engage with students at UMBC, including those in fraternities. Our page included humorous yet insightful memes, as well as more educational posts that describe what consent looks like and what it does not. Our account reached a decent amount of followers (over 100), as well as interaction and reposting from other students, including a couple fraternity brothers. We included captions such as “tag a friend” to encourage more interaction and exposure for our account. Additionally, with the help of Dr. Kate, we were able to print out flyers containing some of our posts along with our instagram handle and hang them around campus to reach more students.

Although we did have a decent amount of followers and interaction with the account, an obstacle we faced was getting interaction specifically from our target audience, fraternities. If we were to do this project again, we would probably need to find more strategies to increase this interaction in a way that does not seem forceful.

Student Disability Services Reform

By Jon Woods, Onyx Purnell, and Cici Molnar

Accommodations ensure learning equality, yet people with disabilities are often overlooked and are told they “aren’t disabled enough” to need accommodations. We highlighted three points where UMBC’s Student Disability Services (SDS) office has made accommodations inaccessible to many students on campus. 

The Survey

We conducted a survey of 16 UMBC students who participated. 9/16 students have attempted to use SDS. The results will follow throughout the remainder of the blog.

Problems/Solutions

What even is SDS? What do they do? SDS stands for Student Disability Services; They are the office responsible for providing accommodations to disabled UMBC students. Our analysis of student experiences revealed that they aren’t doing enough. We noticed a problem: many students don’t know where to even get accommodations. SDS has very little advertising, if any, resulting in many students with disabilities finding SDS when it was too late in the semester for them to use their services. If you have any type of disability, you have a right to receive reasonable accommodations for equal access to education, no matter when you first happen to find out about SDS. We believe SDS needs more and better advertising for who they are and what they can do for disabled students. 

Imagine you go through the motions of asking for help while disabled and not getting it. That’s what’s happening. According to our survey, 5 out of 9 students (55%) had reported having an issue with SDS. These issues include SDS staff not responding to emails, having a difficult time opening an account with SDS online, or staff being rude (in the office, over emails, zoom calls). Another 4 students report never attempting to use SDS even though they believe it would be beneficial.

You currently cannot receive accommodations through SDS unless you have a diagnosis of a disability through a psychiatrist or a medical practitioner. This targets low income students as doctors can be inaccessible to them due to cost restraints. Mental health stigmas also keep individuals from getting a diagnosis. Removing the need for an official diagnosis would allow people who need accommodations access to them; This is what our project strives to do. In replacement of a diagnosis, a recommendation from a teacher, admin, parent, or on campus doctor could serve as “proof” of disability and therefore a need for accommodations. Changing this part of the system is a long-term, ongoing project that requires collaboration of many offices and the navigation of the law. It is the biggest fish to fry and one goal we did not reach during the duration of the semester. 

Another goal that we were unfortunately not able to reach during the duration of this semester was improving the response times of SDS. 2 out of 9 students reported a lack of response to emails, and several other students reported issues w/ email response times to us personally. We believe that the delay of a response to student inquiries is a major barrier to students receiving the accommodations that they need. Unfortunately, the email communication we received from SDS expressed little to no interest in fixing this issue, as they believe their office is not at fault. 

The goal that we were able to accomplish was education through advertising. We created a poster, advertising SDS and the services they provide. At the bottom of that poster, we wrote about our mission as a group of reform and included a QR code to a website that we created. This poster got lots of traction, and was noticed around campus; So much so that SDS became upset at our group for “falsely impersonating an official university office”. In the end, the posters were taken down, but we still gained lots of traction beforehand, with our QR code getting over 20 scans. We plan to re-design the poster and repost them next semester, as this project does not stop here. We may not have reached all our goals, but we will continue to work until we do so. 

Our website

https://a33217.wixsite.com/my-site

The Struggle With Student Health Insurance

Health Insurance Groups Blog

The problem our group will be addressing is if universities are helpful in providing students with accessible healthcare. Our main focus will be on the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Our rationale comes from how health insurance coverage should be a major part of what universities provide for students, especially when students live on campus or spend hours here if they commute from home. UMBC student health insurance comes in two main versions:

1. Students who are enrolled in a student health plan, normally get health coverage. They do this by enrolling in the Health Insurance Marketplace (Health care coverage options for college students).
2. Different varieties of health plans with certain stipulations:
   1. Dependents under 26; essentially still relying on parents
   2. Dependents for people over 26; applies for coverage with parents or stays on their own plan
   3. Lastly, no one claims you as a dependent; may be living away from parents

So, what needs to change in order for students to get the health insurance they need? Colleges/universities should help college students with understanding health insurance plans more. Essentially proper transition preparation is desperately needed (Rea et al.). It is the students who live away from home need the transition support the most.

The goal of our group is to make health insurance more accessible to UMBC students, requiring us to answer certain research questions. A few questions we came up with were: We need to research how student health insurance is structured and how much? Who is required and not required to have school insurance? Are the multiple options of insurance available?

There are many setbacks and stipulations that students experience when looking for the right health insurance program. According to Rea, Kelly, the vast majority of the students around the US have reported that “someone” taught them to manage their own health care needs. Lack of information about health care options among students, or lack of details about managing mental health (managing stress, anxiety, and panic attacks).. Since students are given the sole responsibility of acquiring their health insurance plans they are lacking the variety of different options related to insurance plans. This lack of information creates further decrease in the students mental health.

This does not only apply to in-country students but international students as well. International students are required by law to carry health insurance. There are no exceptions to this rule. Both students in-state and out of state are encouraged to enroll in student health insurance at UMBC. All UMBC F-1 visa students will be automatically enrolled in UMBC’s student health plan, and will be automatically billed accordingly. In order to expand health insurance resources UMBC should have other methods of awareness in comforting students on choosing the best health insurance plan. Methods such as workshops about details of healthcare insurance among UMBC students. Finding unique ways encourage students to take part in workshops or clubs that relate to healthcare insurance. Lastly, provide flyers or surveys for all students. 

Having a student health insurance plan has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of student health insurance are: A) Having access to local provider networks in the area. B) Having convenient access to the Retriever Integrated Health at UMBC. C) Lastly, students’ financial aid packages may be able to cover the costs for student health insurance. However, the disadvantages of student health insurance are that for non-emergency care outside of a certain radius around UMBC, a referral from a student health facility may be necessary if the student is outside 56 miles of UMBC.

The Health insurance group achieved their goal by creating a poster/infographic that summarized the important aspects of student health insurance and put them around campus. We want to provide more information that relates to healthcare insurance. Many students might not know their rights when it comes to receiving their health insurance so we created this infographic for student guidance. 

In conclusion, we started the project with a very big goal in mind which was to expand the coverage of student health insurance. After some research, we quickly realized that doing that was beyond our capabilities so we scaled down. With our poster we hope to have made more students more aware of their options and more involved with student health care at UMBC.

Addressing the Lack of Proper Sexual Education for University Students

Sex education has historically been a topic of contention in many countries. It is crucial for individuals to have a comprehensive understanding of sexual health and wellness to lead healthy lives. Unfortunately, many educational institutions lack proper sexual education, especially at the university level. This blog post will aim to address the goals of our project, the problem of inadequate sexual education for university students, the research we conducted, and the obstacles we faced.

The Problem

The lack of proper and correct sexual education for university students is a widespread problem that needs to be addressed. Comprehensive sexual education is essential because it increases consent, inclusivity, and safe sex, whilst also decreasing sexual violence. It is also crucial to have inclusive sex education that allows people to explore and have a better understanding of themselves, even if they are asexual. Additionally, proper sex education also encompasses the pleasure aspect of sex, which encourages people to learn about their bodies and sexuality. Lastly, it teaches the emotional aspect of sex and how to tell when someone is ready to have sex physically and emotionally.

The Specific Goal of Our Project

Our goal is to create an event that brings experts into the university to discuss sexual education. This event will enable students to have access to proper sexual education. To complement the event, we created posters with fun facts about sex for pleasure and more serious aspects. We also had a panel of students and experts to better engage with students. By taking the questions and experiences of students and peers, we facilitated an educational conversation about sex education and wellness. Being able to have an open conversation about sex will help students learn about consent, pleasure, and basic sexual education.

Research

We conducted research on other schools to see if they had sex education projects and how they were conducted. We also searched for surveys on sexual knowledge that had been conducted at our university. We looked at previous sexual education events to see what worked and what didn’t. Additionally, we researched good techniques to entice people into an event and what information needed to be discussed in the event. Finally, we researched inclusive sex, which includes queer sex, sex with disabled folx, kink/BDSM safety, and more.

Who Might We Enlist to Help with Our Project?

We collaborated with WILL and combined our ideas for the sex education event. WILL provided funding, food, and a room to hold the event. We collaborated with WILL members to create a panel of both students and experts. We brought in a fetal surgeon who is also a lactation consultant to discuss the anatomy of sex, and a sexual health professional to talk about the emotional aspects of sex.

Obstacles and Strategies to Overcome Them

One of the biggest obstacles we faced was getting people interested in the event. Sex education can be a taboo topic and a bit embarrassing for some people. To overcome this, we advertised the event well and made it enticing. We made the event fun for students by playing jeopardy, providing food, and giving away prizes.

Conclusion

Sexual education is a crucial aspect of a healthy lifestyle. At the university level, sexual education is particularly important as individuals may be engaging in sexual activity for the first time. Our project aimed to address the lack of proper sexual education for university students by creating an event that would engage students in an educational conversation about sex education and wellness. We collaborated with WILL, conducted research, and overcame obstacles to make the event a success. Our hope is that by addressing the problem of inadequate sexual education, we can create a more inclusive and healthy environment for all.

Social Welfare Access for Students

The problems addressed in this project were the inaccessibility of the social welfare system and how to help students find the resources they may need. The social welfare system can be complex to navigate. Difficulties in finding resources could result in a lack of access to needed services. The main goal of the project was to raise awareness of the difficulties of the welfare system and centralize available resources. I chose to go with a flyer that features information about the social welfare system and resources available for students.

I started the project with a broad view of the inaccessibility of the social welfare system. The research was focused on who was most in need in the state of MD, deciding on the best way to raise awareness, and finally choosing a focal point. In my research, I found that there was a lot of information to cover, even after scaling down for the state. I decided to direct my focus to students. I found that there were differences in eligibility for students to receive housing and food assistance. Students may not be aware of what they qualify for through the social welfare system or resources available directly through UMBC. At the suggestion of Dr. Kate, I included a QR code on the flyer that links to a google document that gives more details about the resources available.

Transgender Classes

Black Media Club

The problem we decided to address was the lack of black awareness on campus. UMBC has a history of racially motivated acts against black people. In order to address this issue, we decided to put black stories at the forefront. We thought that black movies, and with them, black media was the best way. After our movie nights, we planned to hold discussions about the black community’s different issues and provide a platform for the black artists at UMBC.

Financial Literacy for UMBC

The problem our group addressed was financial literacy. We realized that students fresh out of highschool are responsible for paying thousands of dollars in tuition and housing. There is a lack of financial education across the board in highschools and colleges. We created a survey for UMBC students, so that we could have an insight into where they stand when it comes to financial literacy. Our results showed that over 53% of students expect to be in debt after they graduate and 77% were not even aware of financial literacy resources offered by UMBC. From this, it was clear that our priority needed to be raising awareness.

At the start of your project we established short-term and long-term goals. The short term goal was to develop and implement a required crash course for all incoming students at UMBC, regarding financial literacy. This is to make sure that students are aware of the financial resources they have available to them before they divide into thousands of dollars in debt. Thesis crash course would be similary to the drug, alchol, and sexual assualt/harrasment awareness courses that UMBC students are required to complete.This would also be a great way to test run the idea of our long-term goal, which would be to establish a financial literacy course that is a requirement for all academic majors. The intent would be to figure out exactly what students want and need out of this type of course and then implement it to fulfill a general education requirement for undergraduate students. 

As we reached the end of our project, we decided to get in touch with the Financial Smarts department to gain more insight about what our school is currently doing to raise awareness about Financial Literacy. After speaking with program specialist, Hannah Sadollah We learned that UMBC has put in place a few programs that help students gain some skills and knowledge about money management, like Peer Money Mentor which is a paid program by our school that gives students a $500 stipend while they receive free training through the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education. The goal of this program is  to help students identify a topic of interest and develop one specialty workshop and share their educational workshop. Just like Peer Money Mentor, there are other programs offered at school that can help any student learn about financial literacy.
We believe that it is crucial for young adults to have access to a Financial literacy course, not only UMBC but nationwide. Because it equips people with the knowledge and skills needed to manage money effectively. Without it, financial decisions and the actions we taken or not taken, lack a solid foundation for success.

Mental Health Awareness

The Butterfly Project Website

Mental health has always been an issue that has been heavily advocated for and change is being made. UMBC is a great example of a school that has the resources and tries to create a community that cares, but many students at UMBC are still vastly unaware of just how many resources and support groups are accessible to them. Through our project we want to spread more awareness to the resources and support that is openly accessible to UMBC students and to make sure students know that they are not alone in their mental health struggles and that they do not have to struggle alone. Our project was called “The Butterfly Project”, stemming from the quote, “Just when the caterpillar thought its life was over it became a butterfly”, we feel this quote embodies overall how dealing with various mental health struggles can feel.

In order to spread awareness regarding the topic, we created both a website and flyer to put around the campus. The link to the website is https://jcunnin15.wixsite.com/website.

On the website, since it was created on Wix, when users scan the barcode, a registration is required to post but not to browse or look around. Users can create their own usernames which is what shows up when they post so anonymity can be optional. On the website, we have a forum so others can post whatever they like, various mental health quotes, various resources provided by UMBC and a description on the purpose and intent of our project.

Through the Department of Psychology, there was a page that listed multiple mental health resources available to UMBC students ( https://psychology.umbc.edu/mental-health-and-wellbeing-resources/). There were links to various counseling groups in the counseling center of individual and group services as well as many online platforms that deal with mental health such as WellTrack, Kognito, U Lifeline, and Togetherall. Many of these online platforms allowed students to share or give little information about themselves, keeping all of this information confidential and convenient to the students. We made sure to list links to these resources on both our flyer and website.

On our flyer, listed below, we made sure to include information about what our project was aiming to do, data on college students and mental health, and making sure there was clear easy access to our website via the QR code.

We wish we had been more proactive when it came to the advertising of our project, so we would be able to monitor student engagement with our website. We felt that as long as we were are able to reach our fellow peers and bring awareness to all the programs and resources they have at their fingertips, we are successful in our project’s mission. It also means being able to see engagement on the website through the Wellness Forum and knowing it has helped students who need it.

updated-butterfly-project-1Download

Free Menstrual Products

We worked on providing free menstrual products in all bathrooms on campus. We relied on support from different offices around campus, such as, the Sustainability center, PRIDE center, the Women’s center, etc. We are grateful for the support and guidance from these offices during our project.