IUSA redistributes Rape Crisis Fund

Following a task-force review, the IU Student Association has decided to cut Rape Crisis Fund donations given to the Middle Way House by 75 percent. The task force formed in October 2006 in response to a decline in donations to the Rape Crisis Fund.\nSince the Rape Crisis Fund’s inception in the 1980s, all donations to the fund have been donated to Middle Way House, a crisis center in Bloomington committed to supporting women and children who are in domestic or sexually violent situations, said Holly Spitz, president of Friends of Middle Way House, an IU student group.\nPart of the donations to the Middle Way House paid for most of Colleen Yeakle’s salary.\nAs a crisis intervention services coordinator for Middle Way House, Yeakle spends time on-call for rape victims.. Most of the time she meets victims at the hospital, where she offers support to them. Yeakle said she does everything from answering victims’ questions to accompanying a victim to the police station, to explaining the incidents to parents or boyfriends. The majority of clients that she helps through the after-assault process are students, and about 40 percent of all Middle Way House clients are students, Yeakle said.\n“I’m on-call 40 hours a week to meet the person that made the brave decision to report a sexual assault,” Yeakle said.\nBut the funding for most of Yeakle’s salary and printed \nmaterials used for sexual assault prevention and awareness has been cut. \nBeginning with funds raised during the 2006-07 school year, 75 percent of the Rape Crisis Fund will instead go to the IU Office of Women’s Affairs to finance three campus programs, leaving 25 percent for Middle Way House. Students have the option to donate $3 to the Rape Crisis Fund when they complete their registrations on OneStart. In 2005, the fund received $12,000, which is less than half of the $27,500 received in 2002, according to an October 2006 Indiana Daily Student article.\nRaising Awareness of Interactions in Sexual Encounters, StopCampusRape.com and the Sexual Assault Awareness Program are the programs the IU Office of Women’s Affairs will support with its share of the money, said Lindsay Kerrigan, chairwoman of the task force and former director of women’s affairs for the IU Student Association. Kerrigan said a benefit these programs share is that they can prevent sexual assault, but Yeakle said the money being taken away from Middle Way House was used for prevention materials.\nThe StopCampusRape.com Web site offers educational modules and opportunities to dialogue with professionals, Kerrigan said.\nRAISE is a student organization that focuses on peer education and about date and acquaintance rape, she said. It conducts training and forums on gender communication in greek houses, dorms and classrooms.\nKerrigan said the IUSA task force thought the Sexual Assault Awareness program that is presented during student orientation warranted support because, for many students, it is the only sexual assault program they see while at IU.\nThe IUSA task force was made up of students, IUSA representatives, faculty and staff members, Kerrigan said. Other student groups or individuals were not consulted on the decision, but instead the students in the task force represented student opinion, she said.\nWhile the loss in donations is disappointing, the process IUSA used to make the decision is even worse, said Spitz, president of Friends of Middle Way House.\n“The people who were most passionate about the issue did not get a voice in the decision,” Spitz said. “More students will be reached by the new funding; however, Middle Way House reaches the students on a deeper level with their vital and irreplaceable reactive service.”\nKerrigan said public universities seeking funding for individual programs are much more limited than not-for-profit organizations in terms of fundraising.\n“We feel saddened and disappointed for sure,” Yeakle said. “It’s a little disenfranchising to have the fund taken away. There’s a sense that the services aren’t valued and the experiences of (sexual assault) survivors aren’t valued.”\nYeakle said Middle Way House will not ease up on its commitment to every survivor of sexual or domestic abuse. If need be, it will go outside of the community it serves to ask for more funding.