Castleton Students become PAC members

CASTLETON, Vt. — Castleton University students recently completed training to become certified PAC members and victim advocates.

Peer Advocates for CHANGE (PAC) is a volunteer student group. PAC members strive to engage students in consent culture and bystander intervention to eliminate stalking, harassment, sexual assault, rape and intimate partner violence. PAC provides resources, options, and support to students who have experienced trauma from sexual and physical violence, as well as emotional abuse or for those confronting challenges from past victimizations. PAC members are also victim advocates who staff a 24/7 hotline, which is available to survivors or friends of survivors.

CHANGE stands for Creating, Honoring, Advocating, and Nurturing Gender Equality. CHANGE is a coalition of faculty, students, administrators and staff members who work together to develop programs that educate about issues such as sexual assault, rape, relationship violence, sexism and homophobia in the hopes of creating a campus that embraces gender equality in all of its forms.

The following students are now PAC members: Ashleay Wilcox of Windsor, Vermont; Lexie Grenier of Claremont.

Castleton University is small enough to be a community where every student matters, yet offers more than 75 programs of study for undergraduate and graduate students, 28 varsity sports, and over 50 clubs and organizations. The university stresses experiential learning through internships, community service and research opportunities provided by more than 400 community partnerships.