Editors’ Note: Hillary Connor serves as the Sports & Wellness Editor on The Sophian.
Though sexual violence is not always considered a widespread problem on Smith’s campus, data proves that it may be more prevalent than most students assume. Hillary Connor ’26 is working to advocate for reproductive justice at Smith and in the broader community.
As a double major in Sexuality, Women and Gender Studies (SWAG) and French, Connor initially became interested in reproductive justice after taking her first SWAG classes at Smith. These classes led Connor to work as an intern for the California nonprofit End Rape on Campus this past summer. Through connections from her internship, Connor spoke at the Massachusetts State House on Sept. 20 where state lawmakers held a roundtable consisting of college students, educators and reproductive justice advocates to discuss the impact of the Massachusetts Campus Sexual Assault Law.
The 2021 state law aimed to improve responses to sexual violence on college campuses, specifically to address the issue of underreporting. The law, which overlaps with Title IX, requires colleges and universities to develop policies, mandatory trainings and confidential resources pertaining to sexual misconduct, encouraging people to report these incidents. A key component of the law are its obligatory anonymous campus climate surveys that institutions must conduct every four years to collect more detailed data on sexual violence rates.
Connor reflected on the roundtable as an opportunity for legislators to improve the Sexual Assault Law. “They talked a lot about wanting the law to be really dynamic and having this, like, constant reevaluation […] I think they really wanted to have both the administrative perspective and the student perspective on how these laws are being followed by campuses, and if there are loopholes that campuses are using to create less work for themselves or less accountability [and] figuring out what those are in order to try to alter the legislation to provide better protections,” she said. Connor added that data from the first campus climate survey is scheduled to be released this year. Lawmakers hope to take this data into consideration while refining the legislation.
Ultimately, Connor felt the roundtable accomplished what it had set out to do — creating connection and conversation between those developing the law and those reaping its effects. “I think what it did, which is really important, is providing that face to face connection with students and administration and state representatives. Because I think especially with student activism, it can be really difficult to feel like you’re being heard by people who are in higher up positions and vice versa, honestly,” she said.
While speaking on the student panel, Connor focused on the unique implications of Smith as a member of the Five College consortium and the institution’s impact on how students experience and report sexual violence. “A lot of incidents of sexual assault are happening not on our campus, which can make it really difficult to report and to understand which resources are available to us,” she said, adding that this issue has informed much of her on campus activism.
Connor is currently in her second year of employment as a House Community Advisor (HCA) at Smith, where she noticed flaws in the system in which HCAs are trained to respond to sexual violence. “We were getting this really extensive training in Title IX reporting because we’re mandated reporters […] but we weren’t really getting any training in sexual assault prevention work or what resources exist for survivors on campus, which I found a little bit strange,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine someone coming to you and reporting something and you being like, ‘I’m really sorry, that sucks. I’m gonna report it,’” she said.
Through her internship, Connor learned that the period of time from the beginning of the fall semester to Thanksgiving break, known in the reproductive justice field as the “Red Zone,” is when students are most vulnerable to incidents of sexual violence. Connor realized this phenomenon is not discussed during HCA training. “The fact that at orientation and through the Res-Life curriculum, there was no introduction to [the Red Zone] was kind of appalling to me,” she said. Noticing these failures prompted Connor to advocate for a greater emphasis on sexual violence prevention in both HCA training and the resources they provide.
Connor is currently in conversation with Residence Life administration to create information sheets which would contain information on accessing and funding resources like abortions and rape kits to be placed in all houses. She also aims to find a third-party organization to host an HCA training on prevention specific education during next year’s HCA staff training and in the long-term.
Connor feels her advocacy is uniquely important at Smith, and she hopes to incite change. “I think this work is really important, and it’s a really important area of activism that I think sometimes can get swept under the rug on this campus, because people feel really safe here, which is great, and there are a lot of ways that Smith is a safe campus, but the same dangers and systemic problems still exist here that exist on other college campuses, even if they’re a little bit more subtle,” Connor said. “I think this is an area where we have a lot of room to grow, and I hope to see some progress in the coming years.”
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