Troy University’s Trojan Outreach was recognized as a NASPA Outstanding Peer Education program for their work during Interpersonal Violence Awareness Week in October 2020.
“It’s a huge accomplishment,” Trojan Outreach coordinator Morgan “Rose” Williams said. “Even though we do this for the sake of TROY students, it really hits home for us that we’re recognized for something that we’re so passionate about.”
Trojan Outreach is a campus organization where students are “committed to promoting and influencing a culture that is focused on health, wellness and safety by empowering and engaging the campus community to make healthy decisions.”
Their Interpersonal Violence Awareness Week included the Clothesline Project, These Hands Don’t Hurt and a showing of the movie “The Hunting Ground,” a film about sexual assault across college campuses. Each event was to bring awareness to topics that might go undiscussed in traditional classroom settings.
“We’re a branch of student services where we go to classes on campus and orientation and talk about things that aren’t typically discussed in classrooms, such as adjusting to college, interpersonal violence, mental health and other forms of wellness,” Williams said.
For the month of January, Trojan Outreach has started the “Spring into Self Love” project by spreading body positivity across campus.
“January is the month of body positivity,” Williams concluded. “We have an event where we cut out flowers for students to design and write one word they would use to describe themselves.
“We take those flowers and put them on a display we have in [the Trojan Center] across from the post office.”
Students can get involved with Trojan Outreach and “Spring into Self Love” by following the organization’s social media, where they can see upcoming events and participate in surveys.
NASPA, Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, is the professional home for the field of student affairs. It is “dedicated to fulfilling the promise of higher education through [its] guiding principles of integrity, innovation, inclusion and inquiry.”
