Despite the coalition’s larger membership and Rosenfeld’s backing, it will not be easy for Harvard to win this year’s grant.

With the federal grant application due in less than a month, coalition members have been scurrying about in pursuit of administrative support for their project.

Levit-Shore says that meetings with Assistant Dean of the College Karen E. Avery ’87, Special Assistant to the Dean of the College Julia G. Fox and Provost Steven E. Hyman have shown the administration to be supportive of their goals.

Coalition members spoke to University President Lawrence H. Summers during his office hours yesterday. Levit-Shore calls it a “really positive meeting,” though she declines to comment further on Summers’ specific response to the grant proposal.

But Fox says that she has only been aware of the coalition’s plans for a week and that the task of demonstrating collaboration with everyone from local law enforcement officials to health care providers seems a large one to accomplish in less than a month.

“Anything that involves the whole University is pretty extensive,” Fox says. “Both Dean Avery and I have encouraged them to apply as a student group, but my feeling is that it’s very much in the preliminary stages.”

Fox says that since the grant is given out annually, if the University cannot meet this year’s deadline, it could apply next year after more work is done.

While Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 says he is not against applying for the grant, he cannot say whether he will support the coalition’s proposal until he has seen the finished application.

The grant application requires that applicants show a need for the grant in addition to specific plans for using the grant money to improve sexual assault policy and resources for sexual assault victims.

According to the application, the government rewards collaboration among different branches within a university—including campus victim services providers, campus security, faculty, staff, administrators, offices of the dean of students, women’s centers, the athletic department, student groups, campus housing, fraternity and sorority life coordinators, health care professionals, campus clergy and local law enforcement and prosecution agencies.

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst won the grant in 2000 and Tufts University won it in 1999.

Growing Momentum

Coalition Against Sexual Violence leaders have been willing to take on this ambitious project in part because of increased interest in their group this semester.

“I’m really heartened by the support I’ve seen in the community coming to coalition meetings,” Levit-Shore says. “Coalition has made a number of pushes, submitted a number of reports, and I feel like now there’s a lot of energy and a lot of anger and we need to use that.”

One reason the coalition’s membership has tripled in the last two months is that RUS has made fighting sexual violence one of their two main goals this semester.