Fostering Student Activism: Barriers, Sharing, and Dialectics

The present study was an exploratory investigation of interviews with six college students who participated in the development and implementation of a theatre-based sexual assault prevention intervention. We investigated how these students experienced their involvement in activism within the context of developing and presenting a sexual assault prevention program. The research revealed common themes: each student experienced fears about participating in activism or identifying as an activist, had strong desires to share knowledge about sexual assault prevention with their community, and viewed their individual activist identities within a complex understanding of what it meant to be activists. These themes helped us to develop implications for future research and educational practices to support activist identity development.