From a paper for class to an internship with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), senior Gender Sexuality and Women’s Studies (GSWS) major and Honors student Dariel Benton-Updike is proving that speaking up for what you believe in can make long-lasting change.
Benton-Updike’s internship with SEPTA began as an assignment from Adjunct Assistant Professor Christy Davids, CLA ’15. In GSWS 3097: Feminist Theory, Davids tasks her students with writing a letter that advocates for a GSWS or feminist-related cause. As the first assignment of students’ journey in the class, it also challenges students to send the letter to people who could respond and help enact social change.
“One of the things that happens in that class is that we’re really confronting all these things that we have had a simmering rage about but didn’t know how to address,” Davids said.
A Philadelphia native, Benton-Updike has been riding SEPTA since she was a baby and has experienced a lot of sexual harassment while on transit. When tasked to write a letter about a daily tyranny she tolerates, she was determined to write to SETPA about her experiences and how they can make change.
“The thing that came first to my mind was that I tolerate being sexually harassed when I am just trying to get around the city every day,” Benton-Updike said.
Benton-Updike began her letter by detailing her own experiences on SEPTA, followed by some of the more high-profile cases of sexual harassment and assault that have made the news. She also researched what other transit agencies have done and made suggestions for things she thought SEPTA could implement.
The next part of the assignment is where the magic happened.
Benton-Updike emailed her letter to SEPTA’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and a few other people at the agency, as well as the Office of Transportation and the Mayor’s Office for the Engagement of Women.
Though she had to send it, Benton-Updike didn’t expect anyone to actually read it. So, she was shocked when she got an email back from SEPTA CEO and General Manager Leslie Richards saying that she would love to meet with her.
After meeting, Benton-Updike could tell that Richards and other people at SEPTA had read her letter and were moved by what she had to say. At a follow up meeting with the SEPTA executive board and the chief of transit police, they asked if Benton-Updike could continue helping them make changes to their sexual harassment and assault policies. Knowing that she had to do field work for her major the following semester, Benton-Updike and SEPTA worked it out so she could complete her field work with them as an intern in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Department and the Outreach Department.
Around the time Benton-Updike came in as an intern, SEPTA had already put a few initiatives in place to focus on sexual harassment and assault prevention against passengers and employees. That is, the agency had already been revising their code of conduct to specifically prohibit sexual harassment and recently added a category on the SEPTA Transit Watch app to report sexual harassment.
In addition to supporting those two efforts, Benton-Updike has been instrumental in researching initiatives put in place by other transit agencies and conducting interviews and surveys to report riders’ experiences on transit.
In the spring customer safety survey, riders were asked about sexual assault and harassment for the first time. A record 10,000 respondents shared their experiences, and the data is being analyzed now. Benton-Updike also conducted a larger safety survey inspired by focus groups she conducted, gathering 182 responses!
“She has really provided a perspective that I feel was missing because she was an outsider in the sense that she’s not a SEPTA employee,” said Consumer Research Project Manager at SEPTA Dionna Jones, KLN ’08 ’18. Jones is also a member of the newly formed women’s safety committee at the agency. She noted that Benton-Updike has offered pivotal input when it comes to the language they use in survey questions.
All of this culminated in a proposal to Richards and other SEPTA personnel detailing how they can implement more policies to keep riders and employees safe. After, Benton-Updike was offered a full-time position for the summer where she is continuing her work to make SEPTA a safer experience.
At the end of the day, many Philadelphians spend some amount of time on SEPTA and that represents the way Philadelphia operates as a city. Benton-Updike believes in SEPTA and is proud to be able to take her experiences and use them to prevent other people from having the same ones.
“Through this experience, I would challenge other Temple students to not just accept the conditions in their life that feel intolerable,” Benton-Updike said. “There are ways that you have power to make change.”