"We're Not Trained … and We're the First Point of Contact": The Emotional Overtime of Faculty Responding to Student Disclosures of Sexual Assault.

Abstract

Campus sexual assault is a common problem in the United States, and students are often reluctant to report or seek support from official sources such as campus police or their Title IX office. Instead, they typically seek support from informal sources such as the people they know and trust. One common, yet often unacknowledged, source of support is university faculty. Yet, faculty are not typically prepared by their institutions to handle student disclosures of sexual assault and, thus, find themselves performing an intense form of emotional labor without adequate tools. In this study, we explored the emotional labor that faculty invest in managing the trauma of campus sexual assault. From interviews with 17 (mostly women) faculty members with experience responding to student disclosures of sexual assault on 11 different campuses, we found that faculty engaged in what we call "emotional overtime." In the absence of adequate institutional training, faculty engaged in self-preparation to support student victim-survivors of sexual assault and subsequently sought personal support for the toll that this work had on their own well-being. We conclude with recommendations regarding how institutional acknowledgment of - and training for - this important work can benefit faculty and student victim-survivors alike.