#BringBackTheAC… because healing after rape means feeling safe and finding your voice again
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Email for Chancellor Syverud
Below is an email response from the Chancellor that was sent out to students.
July 1, 2014
Dear Orange Friends:
As we enter the heart of summer, which gives us all time to reflect, I have been thinking a lot about two tough issues.
The first is the integration and alignment of the services of the Advocacy Center with the Counseling Center and the offices of Student Assistance and Health Promotion. I know change is hard and this has been a tough change for some students and campus community members.
This change was made for the most important of reasons: to provide the best possible service to students affected by sexual violence. This includes providing completely confidential and privileged services under recent federal guidelines and state law that allows survivors to make choices that are right for them as they seek support. This new structure is the same as other similar and well-respected centers in Syracuse, including Vera House and the McMahon/Ryan Child Advocacy Center.
I have heard from students, faculty, staff and other supporters of the Advocacy Center and I respect and value their passionately held views about its importance. I do not intend to revert to the previous structure, but I do want to preserve within the new structure the positive contributions the Advocacy Center made to our campus community. To ensure this occurs, I will be appointing a Chancellor’s Workgroup on Sexual Violence Prevention, Education and Advocacy, which will include students, faculty and staff representatives. The workgroup will provide Rebecca Reed Kantrowitz, senior vice president and dean of student affairs, and her staff with ideas, suggestions and proposals for how aspects of the Advocacy Center’s programs and services can be better integrated within the new structure. While I want this effort to begin right away, I expect the workgroup’s activities won’t fully begin until everyone returns to campus in August.
The second issue I have been reflecting on is freedom of speech. I’ve learned that when people are passionate about issues we (including me) occasionally say things that annoy or offend others. Yet it is vital, at a great university, that people become passionate about ideas and issues and that we hear from those with different, passionately held views. For that reason, I think we should be very careful before trying to punish “offensive” or “annoying” speech. The best response, I believe, to speech that offends or annoys us is more speech, hopefully civil and responsible. In any event, during this July 4th week, I want you to know I am a believer in free speech and I hope to model that in the future.
Sincerely,
Chancellor Kent Syverud
1989 Task Force and the original call for a Rape Center
Credit to Jason Luther for bringing this to our attention…
“I wanted to post some historical documents that help provide a context for the original genesis of the AC. These were printed in the DO on Oct 16, 1989. Importantly, The Chancellor’s Task Force on Rape was created in response to intense student pressure (including a large vigil in Walnut Park the day before) to make the campus safer in light of increases in sexual assault, including a high profile rape case involving an SU football player and a freshman in DellPlain. For more on this see John Robert Greene’s book, Syracuse University: Vol 5, Chapter 13.”
Task Force DO Oct 16, 1989 (<— pdf link, click here)
Email from Rebecca Reed Kantrowitz
Below is an email sent out by Rebecca Kantrowitz in response to the first Listening Meeting. The next meeting will be July 30th, 4:30-6:00 in Panaschi Lounge in the Schine Student Center.
June 27, 2014
Dear Students, Faculty and Staff:
I would like to thank the campus community members who attended our first Listening Meeting on June 23, at which we discussed the realignment of the Advocacy Center services. I believe it was an honest, heartfelt and productive dialogue that allowed us to clarify questions, enable campus community members to share their concerns and begin to think about next steps within the new structure.
As I shared at the meeting, having heard from many people since May 30, I do believe what we have in common is a strong desire to build a caring, understanding and connected community that is committed to preventing sexual assault and relationship violence.
As I indicated in my previous letter, we designated the Counseling Center to serve as the primary point of access for students seeking services related to sexual violence because of the following reasons:
As a confidential and privileged resource, it affords students the maximum privacy under federal and state law. This will provide clarity to students affected by sexual violence and offer them a full sense of control and freedom to make choices that are right for them the moment they reach out and seek support.
The center has 17 trained staff members who provide advocacy and counseling services to students impacted by sexual and/or relationship violence 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The University will continue reporting non-identifying information regarding incidents of sexual violence to the federal government and make that data publicly available. While the Advocacy Center is no longer a stand-alone entity, the services it provided will continue and be enhanced under the new structure. At the Listening Meeting, five key themes emerged from both attendees and Student Affairs staff:
Decision-making process
Privileged vs. confidential
Counseling Center services
Centralization
Educating the campus community about the new structure
A more complete summary of Monday’s meeting will be posted soon on the Student Affairs website. In addition, dates for future Listening Meetings, along with summaries of those meetings, will be posted there as well. Our next Listening Meeting will be held on July 30 from 4:30-6 p.m. in the Panasci Lounge at the Schine Student Center.
I look forward to hearing any new thoughts or concerns at future Listening Meetings in July and moving forward.
Sincerely,
Rebecca Reed Kantrowitz
Senior Vice President and Dean of Student Affairs
Listening Meeting #1 Attendance
For those who were not at the meeting yesterday, here is a list of people who were on the University’s “panel” so to speak…
Rebecca Kantrowitz, Dean of Student Affairs
Cory Wallack, Director of the Counseling Center
Rebecca Dayton, Associate Vice President of Health and Wellness
Katelyn Cowen, Director of the Office of Health Promotion
Cynthia Maxwell Curtin, Title IX Coordinator
Jill Ouikahilo, Director of Communications/Media Relations for Student Affairs
The Chancellor was not present.
CNY Central Coverage of Listening Meeting #1
News and Video story from CNY Central regarding Listening Meeting #1
http://www.cnycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=1061565#.U6ndgY1dXwd
News Channel 9 Coverage of Listening Meeting #1
Listening Meeting #1 Notes
Below are notes taken by Derek Ford, thanks to him for providing them.
listening meeting – 06-23-13 (<–click here)
Message to Rebecca Reed Kantrowitz
Below is a letter written to Dean Kantrowitz and the Chancellor by a source who wishes to remain anonymous.
“Hello Dean Kantrowitz,
I first want to thank you for taking the time to notify the student body on the reasoning behind merging the Counseling and Advocacy centers. I think it was a shock to the student body when first reading the news and your email provides a little bit of insight. As I am away from Syracuse for the summer, I am one of the majority of the undergraduate community that will not be able to attend these meetings, but wanted to provide some feedback that I hope will be taken into consideration.
I am a rising senior at the university. I had first sought counseling with the center when I struggled immensely with adjusting to college life as a freshman. This past semester I was utterly devastated when I was turned away from the Counseling Center’s services when I had asked about the likelihood of being able to meet with a counselor more regularly. I was completely disrespected by the staff, especially by the receptionist at the front desk and the counselor I used to occasionally meet with. They recommended to “see a doctor in the community” when I do not have a car on campus, I have an enormous 18-19 credit course load and pay an incredible amount of tuition and refuse to pay extra for campus counseling. More importantly, I had attempted to reach Cory Wallach, the director, to inform him of these events and nobody from the Counseling Center had ever returned my phone calls. It was utterly upsetting that a center, who’s job it is to help the students, would act so immaturely and be very lackadaisical to help out a student who was in need. To this day, the problem has not been solved and upon my return to the university this fall, I will continue to get to the bottom of this problem.
While processing the events of what had happened, I realized that a flaw of the Counseling Center–that deserves a little more attention than it has in the past–is that there is too small a staff to serve an enormous population of students who are equally entitled to these services. The Counseling Center uses the excuse that there are too many students seeking help and there are “only 17 staff members.” When calling to reserve an appointment, most students have to wait between 1-3 weeks to get seen for 45 minutes. There is also the occasional conflict, in which counselors are not very considerate of a student’s rigorous class schedule. No student deserves to feel rejected to a service that is paid for with tuition because there is too small a staff to serve the needs of a student.
In the new merging of the Counseling and Advocacy Centers, I ask you to consider the possibility of adding more staff to the Counseling Center as a way of reducing the heavy traffic of students who are equally deserving of Counseling Center services. I think we can both agree that the university does not want to diminish these services from students with this new merging in place, but make the Counseling Center more accessible. With only 2 counselors who are trained to counsel students who have been sexually assaulted, it will be very difficult for the new structure to be ‘enhanced’ in the way that you would hope it to be. With the addition of more staff members to counsel and advocate for students who have been sexually assaulted, the traffic of students who seek these services will decrease enormously and more students will actually be satisfied with the counseling services that Syracuse University offers. I am sure there are multiple factors to why 2 Advocacy Center staff is an ideal number for you, but Syracuse has an enormous student body with many sexual assaults that go overlooked and eventually forgotten. A staff of 19 to accommodate a population of 10,000+ students, who are equally entitled to counseling, is wrong. I hope you reconsider the possibility of increasing center staff to better accommodate students and assure them that the center is very accessible with this new structure in place. Should students experience an assault that deserves immediate attention, they do not deserve to wait up to 3 weeks for an appointment.
I have the uppermost respect for when a university is planning to make changes to strengthen the Syracuse community, but this new merging is a topic that is very sensitive to many students and deserves the most care and attention.
Thank you very much for your time in reading this email.”
RE Listenting Meetings
Paul, Erin, and I want everyone to know that we support and respect each of your decisions about whether or not to attend the first Listening Meeting held by RRK on June 23rd. We urge you to do whatever is the right choice for YOU. Also, please feel free to post why you are or are not going on this page as we welcome and value each one of your thoughts, feelings, responses, and opinions.
#BringBackTheAC 