Last week there was an article in the UMaryland student newspaper about the new Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Program Advocate Office being created to replace the Office of the Victim Advocate, whose grant had expires. On first look, it sounds great,

Health center administrators say the restructured program will not reduce the counseling and education services previously provided and may even enhance the center’s ability to help students. While past programs relied on part-time employees and graduate students, SARPP will now be headed by a full-time employee.

full time staff being one of the things that SAFER really advocates for. However, I knew that we’d been in touch with some students at Maryland who were really unhappy about how the university was handling the potential closing of the Office of the Victim Advocate, so we asked one of them what was really up. Our correspondent, a recent graduate, asked that we keep his/her identity anonymous, but agreed that we could reprint his/her response.

I have graduated from UMD, so I can’t speak as to what is going on there right now, but to answer your question, the change the article speaks of is not what we wanted. The article certainly makes it seem like it will be a better thing, but what it does is merge two of our programs, the Office of the Victim Advocate, which provided advocate services for victims and also did outreach through events and presentations, and the education group SAFER
- Student Advocates For Education about Rape. [Not in any way affiliated with us]

What this merge has done is taken two departments, who previously had a total of 5 graduate students (2 in PhD programs) all at 30 hours per week in addition to around 20 undergraduate students, and make it into one department with one person at 40 hours per week and two graduate assistants whom I assume will be at 20 hours a week each. It’s definitely a significant cut-back – and part of what made OVA so desirable to students was the ability to talk to another student. The client load at OVA jumped by nearly 300% when it started using undergraduate students 2 years ago.

He/she added in a follow up:

…there are undergraduates still working in the office, the original plan did not include them but I guess they were added at some point.

It’s unclear how many, however, as everyone he/she worked with in the Office of the Victim Advocate has graduated or left in frustration.

I want to be clear here. What UMaryland is now offering is still better than what many schools offer. What they had, though, was a program nationally recognized for its excellence – and that’s not what they will have this year. Most importantly, what they have now is not what the students wanted. That’s a serious loss for all students at UMaryland, particularly the estimated 750 students who will be deciding this year if they can trust UMaryland to help them deal with the trauma of being raped. I’m not sure that almost halving the number of staff hours for survivor and prevention services and then calling it a possible enhancement is likely to engender strong feelings of trust among your students.