This App Is a Support System for Victims of Sexual Violence on Campus

Circle of 6

After one of her colleagues sexually assaulted her, Nancy Schwartzman rode home with him.

She was 24-years-old, living alone in Jerusalem, and she wasn’t entirely sure where she was. Living so many miles from her friends and family back in the U.S., she didn’t have anyone she felt she could rely on to come pick her up. So, after enduring perhaps the most violating, frightening, and confusing experience of her young life, Schwartzman had little choice but to accept a ride from the man who raped her.

Now, Schwartzman, who later made a documentary about her experience called The Line, works on technology to ensure that no one ever feels stranded before or after an instance of sexual violence occurs.

Schwartzman is the CEO of Tech 4 Good, the tiny three-person startup behind Circle of 6, an app that makes it easy for users to choose six trusted friends who they can automatically alert in the event of an emergency. Users preprogram their contacts into the app, and with the press of a button, the app will automatically text those contacts. Users can choose a text that asks members of their circle to come get them, to call them, or to give them advice. The app also connects users to national rape support lines.

Nancy Schwartzman. Circle of 6

Now, the startup is in the process of rolling out custom apps for colleges, which Schwartzman refers to as “petri dishes” for sexual assault. These custom apps come pre-programmed with phone numbers for the school’s own support resources and provides those colleges with important information about what’s happening on campus. “We know that the first couple of weeks and months of school are really dangerous for young people,” Schwartzman says. “The app will enable them to have a safety plan and think about this stuff, without feeling too heavy handed about it.”

The app launched in 2012, after winning The White House’s Apps Against Abuse Challenge back in 2011 and has since gained 200,000 users across 33 countries. The company’s new push onto college campuses comes at a particularly apt time, as awareness of the high rate of sexual violence on campuses has finally turned into national conversation.

This summer, The Washington Post published a study that ranked colleges based on the prevalence of forcible sexual assaults reported on campus and found that the number of reports are on the rise. While that’s perhaps a promising sign that more of these traditionally underreported crimes are actually being reported, the numbers in and of themselves are troubling. Recently, a Columbia University student has drawn national attention, after publicly vowing to carry her dorm room mattress around with her until her rapist is expelled from the school. And earlier this year, the White House even launched its own task force to combat the problem.

Schwartzman is hoping that Circle of 6 can at least be part of the solution to the ongoing rape crisis. The first Circle of 6 app for universities launched this week at Williams College in Massachusetts, and Schwartzman says UCLA will also launch the app in the coming weeks. According to Meg Bossong, the director of sexual assault prevention and response at Williams, the most powerful part of the Circle of 6 app is the fact that it empowers not just potential victims, but also bystanders, to act. “Students are very interested in figuring out how to make campus safer,” she says, “but they’re not exactly sure how to do that or if they’re being asked to do that. This is a great way to let people know when they need help.”

Williams is also working with Circle of 6 to collect anonymized data on how people are using the app—whether they’re regularly asking friends to come get them or tapping into the app’s on campus resources—and using that to inform their on-campus prevention courses.

Of course, Circle of 6 is entering a field that’s not without controversy. After a group of students recently invented a nail polish that changes color when it detects date rape drugs, the idea was lambasted in the press for placing the onus of prevention on women. But Bossong says while she agrees with that criticism, she views Circle of 6 differently. “This is about building the culture we want on our campus, a culture in which people feel someone will have their back and a culture in which people feel they owe it to the community to make sure it’s safe,” she says. “Risk reduction technology, like nail polish, takes for granted that it’s going to happen and don’t push for cultural change.”

Still, Schwartzman is the first to admit this tool is just that: a tool, not a solution. Sexual violence is a complex issue, one that Schwartzman says is still all too easy to explain away by blaming the victim or drawing lines around what does or doesn’t constitute rape. It’s precisely the type of response Schwartzman faced after her assault. Now, she says, the bulk of the work that needs to be done is in truly changing that cultural paradigm. “A mobile tool is a cool, new innovation, and we’re glad people are using Circle of 6,” she says. “But there’s this other stuff that needs to happen too, like consent-based education, justice, and transparency to address the problem in a holistic way.”