Washington; Students Organize to Battle Against Sexual Assault
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Sexual assault is a growing concern on campuses nationwide, and students at the University of Washington are organizing to combat it. Since the undergraduate student government’s Sexual Assault Committee formed last fall, the committee has initiated a program on rape prevention and education and has sponsored a petition drive supporting the creation of a Sexual Assault Center on campus. The committee chairwoman, Judith Nicastro, said 1,000 signatures have been collected. “There’s no unified place for students to go, nor is there any peer support, peer counseling, anything peer-related,” said Ms. Nicastro, a 26-year-old senior majoring in women’s studies who is from Saddle River, N.J. She said that a sexual-assault center would be a centralized place where students could report rapes or be taken to a university-affiliated health-care center and receive professional or peer counseling and referrals. Students must go to at least three different locations to receive these services. The center would also run rape prevention and education programs. More : query.nytimes.com |