Letter to our Community

Dear Princeton,

Welcome to the SHARE website.  If you are new to Princeton or our office, please know that SHARE is a survivor-centered, trauma-informed, confidential resource on campus for anyone experiencing interpersonal violence, including you.  

Interpersonal violence on college campuses is a national epidemic and a public health crisis. Our Princeton community is no exception, and we believe the work starts here. SHARE is dedicated to making all of our communities safer by utilizing the socio-ecological model of violence prevention, to ensure we combat violence from all angles (individual, group, institutional, community, and society). We recognize that interpersonal violence is fostered by oppression in all of its forms, and we direct our prevention and intervention efforts with that in mind. We are mindful that many forms of trauma, including racial violence, climate change, and other results of systemic oppression compound and make more complex the experiences and trauma of the survivors and community we serve.  

We anchor to building a holistic culture of respect on campus, as well as skill-building on bystander intervention, consent, setting and respecting boundaries, and healthy relationships. As a complement to our prevention programming, we provide consultative services in support of students looking to (re)establish behavioral expectations for their teams, organizations, and clubs in order to promote safe, respectful, and inclusive environments.

Despite our efforts to prevent interpersonal violence and abuse, it does occur on our campus.  We work to reduce the pain and suffering that results from these acts by supporting survivors. This support can take the form of individual advocacy (assistance navigating the University and community-based systems) and counseling to facilitate emotional healing. At SHARE, our primary goal is to help empower survivors to make informed decisions about which options, if any, they wish to pursue while affirming and supporting their intersectional needs and wellbeing. In addition to our services for survivors, a specialized SHARE provider, located outside of Frist Health Center, facilitates a clinical and educational intervention program for those who have caused harm, to assist them in understanding the impact of their harm and gain the skills necessary to prevent it in the future.

While we don’t create campus policy or have the role of enforcing policy, our advocacy efforts highlight student and survivor voices to those who have these responsibilities. Whenever possible, we look for opportunities to expand options and explore structural or institutional interventions that can increase the likelihood for more respectful interactions and support the empowerment, listening to, and belief in survivors. Oftentimes, this takes the form of working collaboratively with campus partners and external stakeholders to improve policy, procedures and other systemic responses that impact survivors.

We hope one day to work ourselves out of a job and eliminate interpersonal violence in our communities.  In the meantime, we serve survivors, co-survivors, first responders, and those who wish to partner with us in our efforts. 

In solidarity,

Your SHARE Team (Shawnie, Louis, Jackie, Carrie, Annette, Matt, and Prashanti)