New PG High program teaches boys about their role in preventing rape.

Organizers set the social for Dec. 20 at Pacific Grove High School. Principal Stan Dodd was there. So was varsity football coach Buck Roggeman and staff from the Monterey Rape Crisis Center. They wondered if students would show up to talk about a new club that would teach boys about their role in preventing violence against women. They stocked the room with pizza, crossed their fingers and hoped for 16 boys.

They didn’t get their 16. They got 80. And that was just the first night.

“We encourage an alliance between men and women to end the violence.”

The California Coalition Against Sexual Assault (CALCASA) launched its MyStrength program in 2005. Six schools statewide participated in the pilot project, which targeted boys 14 to 18. The program is now set to begin at PG High. There’s only room for 16 teens.

Developed by the Washington, DC-based Men Can Stop Rape, the project, according to CALCASA, was designed “to raise awareness of sexual violence among youth and highlight the vital role that young men can play in fostering healthy, safe relationships.”

Todd Crawford is the education director and prevention educator at the Monterey Rape Crisis Center. The center was one of only 13 statewide allowed to send a representative to receive training on implementing the program at local schools in 2007.

Once Crawford completed the training, the center’s focus narrowed to determining which high school within its service area (the Peninsula and North County) would get the program.

“It came down to Seaside or PG,” Crawford says.

Through collaboration with administrators, parent teacher groups and school boards, Pacific Grove emerged the frontrunner.

“We were essentially already there,” Crawford says.

Last summer, after Crawford had been MyStrengh trained, he got a call from coach Roggeman.

“Before school started, [Roggeman] asked us to go over there and run through MyStrength with the team,” Crawford says. “He wanted them to know not just what his expectations were on the field, but what they were off the field as well.”

The one-day class was an abridged version of the 15-week program. But the message was the same.

The audience, Crawford remembers of that early morning last summer, was ideal. “The entire campaign, it seems, is tailored to a group just like those football players,” he says. “They are kids’ visions of leaders and icons on campus: the strongest of the strong, the men on campus.”

The program focuses on breaking down such stereotypes, but particularly that of men in dominant roles and women in subservient positions. It’s about redirecting old schools of thought, like men should be the ones to ask women out, and men should always pay.

“Those ingrained images create a problem with a balance of power from the very beginning of a relationship,” Crawford says.

The program teaches fundamentals: it’s OK to be asked out, and that it’s OK to let a woman pay. It aims to teach mutual respect—from a man’s perspective—about boundaries and how they’re easily crossed.

MyStrength is also about empowering boys.

“We’re attempting to create an image of manhood that is more acceptable,” Crawford says. “We’re hoping to give young men confidence instead of a dominant perspective. Historically, the rape crisis movement has been thought to be a woman’s movement. That’s wrong. Men have to be equally involved. We encourage an alliance between men and women to end the violence. Women can’t do it without the guys.”

Still, no one was quite sure it would appeal to high school boys.

“We just weren’t sure what kind of response we’d get,” says Dodd.

Though 80 showed up, Dodd remained skeptical.

“Anytime you offer high school boys food, they’re going to show up,” he says. “So we did two, to really gauge the support.”

The turnout for the second social was just as good. The group will be narrowed to 15 or 16. “We looked at the kids who came back both times,” Dodd says. “It’s a commitment to go through this curriculum. I won’t tell them that. It’ll scare them away.”

Instead, the leftover group of boys will become a club. Later this month, they’ll begin to meet at lunchtime.

“The mixed messages are everywhere,” Dodd says. “The media’s stock stereotype of a teenager is what you would see on TV, a Friday Night Lights portrayal of a jock athlete with a woman in a dominated role. And I think it’s time that we really confronted that stereotype.”

Crawford says he’s excited about finally getting a program up and running with a group of committed teens who have chosen to take part in the group. While he’s given abbreviated versions of the class other places in the county,  to boys at Juvenile Hall or the occasional PE students, this will be the first curriculum-based intensive program.

“It’s the first step to really getting this thing going countywide,” Crawford says.

Dodd says he’s proud of his students and the endeavor they’re about to undertake. “These kids are taking a risk, and they need to be recognized for taking this enormous step to say, ‘I’m going to tackle some stereotypes, and I’m going to try to break them.’ I can’t say it enough: It’s groundbreaking. And these young men are leading the way.”