Chapter 4: Building a Campus-Community Coalition to Address Dating and Domestic Violence

This chapter shares insights gained from 10 years of building a campus-community collaboration that addresses dating and domestic violence. It begins with a brief discussion of the scope and extent of domestic and dating violence and a case for why schools and universities must be involved in education about these issues. The chapter then discusses how the coalition began and describes its work, successes, and challenges to date. Also included is a description of how students have been involved with the initiative through service-learning. Student perspectives on their involvement are included as well.

Dating and domestic violence is among the most frequently occurring forms of gender-based violence in the United States and around the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) (2017), globally approximately one-third of women who are in relationships report physical or sexual violence by a partner. This violence can be deadly. Almost 40% of murders of women are committed by current or former intimate male partners (WHO, 2017). Were incidents to stop for just one week, 487,500,000 women would not endure abuse and the children of 380,250,000 would not have to witness it (Hamrick, 2019).