c/o WesWell
The University’s Office for Health Education (WesWell) has hired Amanda Carrington as its new Associate Director for Sexual Violence Prevention. According to WesWell’s Director of Health Education September Johnson, the new position covers responsibilities that were previously a part of the Support, Healing, Activism, and Prevention Education (SHAPE) office, which was recently absorbed into WesWell following Johanna DeBari’s departure from the University.
“[The] Associate Director for Sexual Violence Prevention position was created after WesWell merged with the SHAPE Office at the beginning of this semester,” Johnson wrote in an email to The Argus. “WesWell now hosts and coordinates sexual violence prevention education and programming on our campus.”
The responsibilities of the associate director position include supporting students, faculty, and staff that may have been impacted by interpersonal violence, providing student leaders and activists with educational resources, and collaborating with other student support offices on campus, such as Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS).
“My position has a few key roles on campus,” Carrington wrote in an email to The Argus. “[To] support student leaders and activists with interpersonal violence prevention awareness and response initiative, provide consultations to faculty, staff, and students on best practices in supporting individuals impacted by interpersonal violence, collaborate with CAPS, the Office of Student Involvement, and the Office of Equity and Inclusion to deliver campus wide interpersonal violence prevention education programming, provide individual support and referrals for students in the aftermath of interpersonal violence.”
Carrington, who has worked in crisis advocacy and prevention education for most of her career, is experienced in the type of work that she will engage in at WesWell and is primed to tackle the responsibilities of her new position.
“For the past six years, I worked at a member center within the Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence,” Carrington wrote. “While there I held the positions of Child Advocate, Campus Advocate, Lead Advocate, and Assistant Director. As the campus advocate, I facilitated prevention education and survivor advocacy for about ten colleges and universities within Hartford County.”
Carrington cites her time engaging with college students as a campus advocate as her primary motivation for continuing her work in interpersonal violence prevention and education at Wesleyan.
“Within this role [of campus advocate], I spent several years working specifically with survivors on college campuses,” Carrington wrote. “My time in this position revealed that, throughout the state, students were actively working to eliminate violence at their schools. Their passion motivated me to seek out opportunities where I could work more closely with college students. As a Connecticut native I am familiar with Wesleyan’s reputation for student activism and involvement.”
As she assumes her role in WesWell, Carrington hopes to increase focus on how interpersonal violence manifests at the University. She hopes that she can work to make campus a safer and more inclusive environment through her position.
“My hope is that students view my role as evidence of Wesleyan’s commitment to supporting survivors of interpersonal violence,” Carrington wrote. “I also hope to shift how we talk about preventing and eliminating violence as a campus community. My role will feel most impactful when students (including those not directly impacted by interpersonal violence) feel empowered and motivated to facilitate violence prevention on campus.”
Carrington’s new colleagues at WesWell are similarly enthusiastic about Carrington joining the office and are looking forward to collaborating with her to provide interpersonal violence prevention resources and education to campus.
“We are lucky to have Amanda,” Johnson wrote. “Amanda comes to Wesleyan with wonderful previous experience to share with the Wes community. Through [her previous] work, she created and facilitated trainings for various audiences about preventing harm and has over six years of experience on a sexual violence hotline providing support for community mental health and resource needs. Amanda is kind, caring, and calming and I am certain our community [will] find this to be true!”
Carrington will also be working closely alongside WesWell Sexual Violence Prevention interns Charissa Lee ’23 and Avanthi Chen ’25, who are both excited to collaborate with her.
“I’m very optimistic about [working with] Amanda,” Chen said.
Lee added that, while the transition may take time, she is confident that Carrington will quickly become a fixture in the University community.
“I think she’s gonna be awesome,” Lee said. “I think it’ll take time for people to be acclimated to her, to trust her, and to get her in places so that people can recognize her as a resource. That’s what we are gonna focus on this semester to make sure that everyone knows that we have this new person on campus to provide support.”
Sulan Bailey can be reached at sabailey@wesleyan.edu.