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| New Center for Women Students Location Comforting for Clientele By Andy Elder, Student Affairs Writer For most women who have a reason to visit the Center for Women Students (CWS), a traumatic event has already intruded on their life. So, if they are seeking out one of the many services there, they are already self-conscious. That’s why the center’s move to 204 Boucke Building, into its own space, is a seemingly innocuous but pragmatically significant event. “It’s a very good thing,” said Peggy Lorah, director of Center for Women Students. “We know students come to us with some difficult things to deal with — sexual assault, relationship violence — and it’s very daunting to walk in anywhere. Now, when students come through our door they are right there. They don’t have to negotiate other offices and think, ‘oh, everyone knows why I’m here.’” Lorah, who has been the director for four years, said CWS had shared space with Residence Life and Judicial Affairs. But for women who wanted to visit their offices, they had to negotiate these other offices to find CWS. “(Now) we have office space, reception space, and a resource room for studying, meetings, and gathering that adjoins our office space. It really gives us a nice area to do some different things,” Lorah said. “What we do most of is educational programming, mostly on issues of violence against women, services students seek us out for individually, especially victims of sexual assault. We’re really involved in issues of equity and access for women students.” In Lorah’s four years as director, the center has intensified efforts to spread the word about its programs and mission. One even, in particular, dramatically impacted that effort. “One thing that has happened is we have a grant from the Department of Justice called “Violence Against Women on Campus.” It really allows us to collaborate with other units to provide comprehensive services for women,” she said. Among those services are:
The combination of the grant and the center’s already vast resources have raised the campus awareness level. But the first thought that raising awareness would also increase the center’s volume of traffic proved not to be the case. “Across the board, students are using services more as time goes by. The word is getting out. Students are reporting incidents more often and seeking police interventions. More are going to the hospital to get exams,” Lorah said. “We’ve been keeping numbers for close to 10 years and the victims have remained about the same each year. We go to classrooms and speak to student groups and the students have the information.” Part of the reason for the leveling of the numbers has been educating men. “We’re helping men to understand they can be change agents. We’re showing them that they can intervene with friends and tell them ‘that’s not cool behavior.’ We see some real differences in the way men are responding and what they’re talking about,” Lorah said. “In class, we showed men some graphic things and they were horrified to see something like this happening. Now they’re saying, ‘I’ll do something about it.’ At one time, they did nothing. They realize we’re all part of a community.”
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Updated October 17, 2005