Does a College Education Mean

cess. Two groups meet each week and each group consists of up to 20 people. The group atmosphere is safe and supportive and students feel free to take risks and be themselves. The group leader's style is confrontational and direct. This safe setting in combination with the leader's style and the fact that the leader is male seem to greatly enhance and foster the healing process. The panel discussions benefit the presenters as well as the observers. First, telling their stories is empowering. With each panel presen-tation comes strength. Second, the presenters receive support, empathy, and sometimes even anger from the audience. Learning to manage their own feelings together with reactions from the audience provides a challenge. Third, the presentations provide a way for the survivors to take a devastating and traumatic experience and use it for good. Those of us who work with sexual abuse vic-tims at our counseling center have observed stu-dents as they begin the healing journey in in-dividual therapy (usually following attendance at a panel discussion) through group therapy to the point at which they become a panel presenter. Over 1,000 students have attended the panels so far this year, and many have gone on to address their abuse for the very first time. The program has been very rewarding to the counseling center staff as well as the students, and it seems to be a very effective method of addressing a sensitive, yet vitally important issue