Any information shared beyond the Advocacy Center is too much — that’s just one of the views shared about the center’s new practice.

Limited information — but not names — could be shared in cases of harassment, discrimination and sexual violence to check for patterns of repeat offenders.

The administration and campus police say this will allow them to be proactive. But five students have sent out a letter claiming this will discourage students from using the Advocacy Center. The executive director of a local domestic and sexual violence service agency said she sees both positives and negatives to the situation.

The idea comes from a combination of best practices and guidance from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The administration says there’s no issue with repeat offenders at SU.

The administration says the Advocacy Center isn’t changing — it’s the same resource students are used to, and they shouldn’t be deterred from going.

Ed Weber, a Department of Public Safety senior detective, said the new practice will not deter students from using the center’s resources. If students are really concerned, Weber added, there are other available resources, such as Vera House.

“I don’t see any problem whatsoever,” Weber said. “It’s the first time in a long time that we got a committee together to be on the same page. Which is just great.”

Weber, like others at the university, emphasized how the new practice will allow them to identify patterns of repeat offenders, and that “student can be anonymous, no ifs, ands or buts.”

Still, five students have sent out a letter to volunteers and anyone interested about the issue. The letter claims the practice will “discourage victims from using the Advocacy Center as the resource it was intended to be” and that it “is no longer a confidential service” for SU students.

The letter calls on students to voice concerns about the center if they feel it’s necessary to do so. The students who created the letter also plan on organizing a meeting to discuss what’s been happening with the center.

Olivia McVoy, a sophomore social work major who signed the letter, said it’s a long, emotional process for someone to gather the courage to tell his or her story.

Some people might just want to explain what happened and then figure out what kind of assistance they can get, said McVoy, who’s also a volunteer at the center.

“It should be 100 percent up to the victim as to what happens to their information,” she said. “If they want to reveal the name of the perpetrator and the location of the attack, I feel that it should be their decision.”

Eric McGriff, another student who signed the letter and a volunteer at the center, said students have told him that they won’t report anything if they don’t feel what’s said at the center will stay there. McGriff, a junior political philosophy and women and gender studies major, said he’s speaking on his own behalf and not for the Advocacy Center. He said he’s not being told to speak for the center, either. Advocacy Center Director Janet Epstein did not accept a request for an interview, and directed all questions about the new practice to the interim senior vice president and dean of student affairs.

The idea of using general surveys and details to help law enforcement and advocates isn’t unheard of — if it is being done in a way that ensures confidentiality and anonymity for a victim, said Jennifer Marsh, the vice president for victim service at RAINN.

RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, is the country’s largest anti-sexual violence organization.

“There’s certainly precedence, in general, for using patterns of incidents to try and to develop risk reduction or prevention strategies,” she said.

Marsh said she couldn’t speak about SU specifically without seeing exactly what and how data is being provided.

Victims should be informed, she said, if their information is being used for research purposes.

Randi Bregman, executive director of Vera House, said while it’s “wonderful” that the university is trying to be proactive about sexual assault on campus, this new practice could create some complexities.

“From our perspective, there’s a little bit of complexity due to the Advocacy Center not having what we knew to understand as confidentiality in the past,” she said.

Vera House was not involved in creating the new practice, but was later brought into the conversation with the university, she said.

Before this new practice, Bregman said Vera House would sometimes refer students to the Advocacy Center since it had a similar confidentiality policy in which no details were shared or reported to other parties.

“We take confidentiality very seriously, and that means any aspect in the story that could tie it back to a person. So I think the university’s effort to make sure they’re reporting has created some additional challenges as to how the Advocacy Center responds,” she said.

In terms of the practice of eliminating repeat offenders, Bregman said this is “a very worthy and important effort” that can be accomplished for cases that are brought into the system.

“But for those cases where people say their lives are going to be ruined, and they just want someone to talk to, I would like to be sure their confidentiality is protected,” she said.

Still, Bregman said she thinks there are a lot of positive aspects to the university’s “renewed attention to this issue.” Eliminating repeating offenders and not underreporting assault cases are issues that other campuses are struggling with, she said.

“This is not the only campus in the country trying to sort this out. This is happening everywhere,” Bergman said. “The good thing is that we’re not trying to sweep sexual assault under the rug.”

Published on September 26, 2013 at 2:29 am

Contact Meredith: mhnewman@syr.edu | @MerNewman93