Sexual Assault Program celebrates 30 years

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Editor’s note: This story has been changed to reflect that it was the 30th anniversary.

MSU students and university officials celebrated the 30th anniversary of the MSU Sexual Assault Program on Thursday afternoon at the MSU Sexual Assault Program office in the Student Services Building.

After serving MSU and the community for more than two decades, the MSU Sexual Assault Program still is needed on campus, said Barb Walkington, a counselor for the MSU Sexual Assault Program.

In the late 1970s, MSU graduate students and faculty members recognized the need for a sexual assault program and began working to organize a formal program on campus, Sexual Assault Program Coordinator Shari Murgittroyd said.

Since then, the program has grown to support three full-time positions and service more than 300 victims of sexual assault every year, Murgittroyd said.

“(The program is important) because of the prevalence of sexual violence that exists in our culture,” Murgittroyd said. “There’s a lot of sexual violence in our culture but we don’t like to talk about it much.”

In 2009, there were about 17 cases of criminal sexual conduct in East Lansing, according to the 2009 East Lansing Police Department Statistical Report. On MSU’s campus in 2009, there were 16 reported forcible sex offenses, according to MSU’s Annual Crime and Fire Safety Report.

MSU’s program was the first sexual assault program on a university campus in the country, Murgittroyd said.

Sexual assault is more prevalent among college-aged adults than other demographics, said Elizabeth Battiste, president of Sexual Assault Crisis Intervention and a communication junior.

Sexual Assault Crisis Intervention is a student group associated with the MSU Sexual Assault Program.

“It’s really powerful,” Battiste said. “It’s one of the few student organizations that really, truly makes a difference on campus.”

The MSU Sexual Assault Program offers services including a 24-hour crisis hotline, medical advocacy, counseling and legal advocacy.

The hotline was opened more than a decade ago, Walkington said.

Last year the MSU Sexual Assault Program received more than 100 phone calls on the hotline, she said.

“Basically, what our volunteers can do is be a 24-hour lifeline for (victims or friends and family of victims),” Battiste said. “That’s the most powerful thing our program can do.”

In 2005, students established Every 5 Minutes, or E5M, a theater troupe inspired by the 1980’s statistic that every five minutes a woman is raped, and a poem about the statistic, Murgittroyd said.

The group presents skits around campus educating people on sexual assault, Battiste said.

Walkington said students sometimes miss out on fulfilling their dreams of graduating from college because of the emotional trauma of sexual assault.

“We know that sexual violence has a really negative impact on victims and it can affect their academic success,” Walkington said.

“We don’t want students to leave MSU because of sexual violence.”

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