What We Aren’t Taught: Mount Sinai’s SAVI Hosts Sexual Harassment Training at Stuyvesant

In health class, everyone learns about consent, but that is about it. Mount Sinai’s Sexual Assault and Violence Prevention Program (SAVI) wants to change that. Advocates from the program visited Stuyvesant to educate students about sexual violence, how to prevent it, how to support survivors, and how to recognize unhealthy relationships. The event helped students consider how to make this knowledge more accessible, and it is only the beginning for changes at Stuyvesant.

SAVI is a non-profit rape crisis program that was established in 1984 at the Mount Sinai Hospital. It provides free and confidential services to survivors of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and sex trafficking. Junior Olivia Cisse attended a summit, “Women in Our World,” that included a panel of speakers on women’s issues in November 2024. Cisse connected with peer advocate Liz Conboy from SAVI. “[She] talked about the rights that minors have, in the case that they are sexually assaulted or harassed. I went up to Liz after she finished talking and [said that] this sounds really cool,” Cisse remembered. 

Inspired, she decided to bring SAVI to Stuyvesant, though the training was open to students from across the city. “It started with [...] my third project [in ‘Writing to Make Change.’] I wanted to do something to tackle sexual assault [and] the lack of [clear] policy that Stuyvesant has. [English Teacher Annie Thoms] suggested [...] a peer advocate group,” Cisse explained. Cisse organized for Conboy and SAVI Outreach and Training Program Supervisor Lindsey Curtis to visit Girl Up, a club at Stuyvesant that focuses on furthering gender equality at school and beyond.

The project grew into Cisse and fellow Girl Up members organizing for Conboy and Curtis to lead a training open to all students. Cisse also worked on compiling Stuyvesant’s sexual harassment policies, which she shared at the end of the training with Dean and English teacher Maura Dwyer. “This was such a group effort with everyone: Ms. Thoms, Ms. Dwyer, Lindsey, and Liz [from] Mount Sinai,” Cisse described. “I literally wouldn’t have been able to get anyone to come without Girl Up. Having a support group, people who care about the same things that you care about and who want to do the same things that you want to do [...] meant a lot to me.” 

About a dozen students attended the training, including three from other schools who heard about the event through friends. All learned more about sexual abuse, which is often overlooked in everyday instruction. “I’ve come to realize sexual abuse isn’t very commonly talked about at school. Especially at Stuy, we probably spend one lesson in health class on it, and then we move on. And not a lot of people recognize when a relationship is unhealthy, and also a lot of people either don’t know or are scared to reach out for help and assistance,” junior Jerry Qiu shared. The training, which lasted from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., allowed students to participate in discussions and taught them about trauma responses and how to support survivors of assault and harassment.

SAVI typically trains adults to support sexual assault survivors in the emergency room. However, for Curtis, the goal of bringing a version of this training to high schoolers was to empower them. “It’s really helping them understand what are some of these difficult issues that are facing them today in terms of gender-based violence inside and outside of school. We were hoping that students would learn about their rights and resources, both in the community and also their legal rights to access care as well. [We aimed] to empower students to continually try to improve systems within their school, to learn to support each other, and to advocate for themselves,” Curtis shared.

The training, where students discussed sexual harassment and relationships openly,  provided a safe environment for students to do just that. “It honestly made me feel not only educated on a lot of topics related to equality [and] consent, but it made me feel incredibly comfortable to talk about things that are usually more difficult and uncomfortable to talk about,” junior Naz Karalar shared in an email interview.

Part of the training focused on gender dynamics and how sexual harassment and abuse are a serious issue for all people. “[Sexual abuse] is more common in girls and women. Being a guy, I feel like most guys [...] probably know what sexual abuse is [...] but I don’t think most guys know just how serious it is, and I’m not sure if a lot of them are interested in such topics,” Qiu said. This is an important message for students to hear; so many members of Girl Up and beyond hope that peer training will be incorporated into Stuyvesant instruction, perhaps through guidance push-ins.

Lessons on the pyramid of sexual violence, for example, could start a culture shift at Stuyvesant. The pyramid tracks how a society that allows assault and harassment does so because rigid gender norms and rape jokes are so normalized. To combat sexual assault, it is imperative that all come together to stop these root issues before they escalate into larger ones. 

Men have a uniquely important role to play in calling out such root issues, regardless of whether they are perpetrators themselves. “Even if you’re someone who doesn’t actually harass people or doesn’t think that they harass people, the people that you surround yourself with, your friends, your family, those are other men that you have to hold accountable because if you don’t then you’re just continuing this cycle of guys who don’t say anything or speak up about it because [...] nobody wants to be the first person to say something,” Cisse said. Hosting more trainings with the SAVI program during the school day can help promote an environment where all feel comfortable calling out harmful rhetoric, ultimately creating an environment where such sexual aggressions are not accepted.

Cisse also hopes that this first training will be a catalyst for changes in Stuyvesant’s sexual assault policies. “Stuyvesant doesn’t have any specific policy that’s written about sexual assault and sexual harassment specifically. They just have the NYC DOE student code of conduct [...] but it’s more [for] filing a report against a violent situation, and not specifically sexual assault and sexual harassment,” Cisse explained. Stuyvesant adheres to the Citywide Standards of Intervention and Disciplinary Measures, which aren’t made widely available to students. It includes options for school administrators when disciplining perpetrators—there are no public documents clearly stating how Stuyvesant implements these loose guidelines.

“A lot of the students who are sexually harassed [don’t] know how to report [...] because none of this information is published on the school website. I think in order to help students [...] there has to be some sort of source that these survivors feel comfortable talking to. The people who are trained by these [SAVI] peer advocates can be that resource for these people, because we’re kids, just like them,” Cisse said. Girl Up’s next goal is to make resources to report sexual assault more accessible and understandable for all students.

SAVI also plans on creating a citywide teen support group to help teens going through harassment or assault. “In the next school year, starting in September, I’d like to see if we can get a group together from high schools across New York City to see how you can get involved [in fighting sexual harassment and assault],” Curtis said. The group may have a crucial role in getting these trainings to more schools across the city in the future.

Hosting a training with the SAVI program was an excellent place to start changing attitudes about sexual violence, but efforts cannot stop there. Sexual harassment and assault aren’t going away unless we, as students and members of our community, act. Currently, one in six American women and one in 33 American men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime; 11 percent of high school students reported being sexually assaulted in the previous year in 2021. Through widespread training and sharing of resources, we can make Stuyvesant a safer place for all and work to carry these actions and attitudes beyond into our own communities.