Why was Embattled created?

This initiative was born out of community upheaval during the Spring of 2020. Five Black student leaders (Marina Cepeda ‘21, Vitallia Williams ‘22, Mikala Uter ‘23, Mac Battle ‘21, Max Holden ’22 and Isaiah Johnson ’22) partnered with the Associate Dean for Community Life and Inclusivity – Dr. Bryant Ford, the Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Tuck School – Dean Dia Draper, and OPAL Deans of Pluralism and Leadership – Angela Brizant and Sebastian Munoz-Medina. We developed a plan of action and established Community Standards in response to the sexual violence and harm occurring in the Black undergraduate community. As our team slowly expanded and developed our programming, we recognized three key deficiencies in Undergraduate Student support. In resolving these deficiencies, we partnered with the Executive Chair of the SPCSA – Maggie Flaherty ‘21 – to build and fund a program that will help all Dartmouth undergraduates, the Embattled Program:

1. Because we contributed an average of eight hours a week as planners, facilitators, and coordinators, some of us struggled to balance our academics, jobs, athletic, extracurricular, and familial obligations. We recognized that this work is necessary, acknowledged that socio-economic status should not hamper participation, and insisted that future work be paid.
2. All undergraduates attend mandatory training related to intimacy, sexual harm, consent, and queer/gender violence; but the programming is broad, and usually occurs in formal settings with strangers we happened to matriculate onto campus with. While serving our community, we learned that specificity increases effectiveness. Social engagement, intimacy, and sex are heavily impacted by culture; Embattled allows small communities to seek/create programming that best serves them without the institutional or organizational limits of other student groups.
3. The lack of institutional memory at Dartmouth compounded our work; we felt like we were building something new with every initiative. We wanted to build a lasting organization with a database of historical programming related to sex, consent, gender, and sexuality. The Embattled database will serve as a collection of historical programming at Dartmouth; it will be searchable, provide links to relevant resources, include summary descriptions, posters/media, as well as document the impact and campus reception for each submitted event.

Founders

The people with the idea, the students that wanted to do something amazing.

Key Supporters

The people who trusted, guided, and funded the folks that wanted to do something amazing. They are advocates, protectors, stewards, educators and mentors all.

---