It all started with S.H.E. 

     One of the most notorious organizations for women’s health stationed in Purdue’s community, Sisters for Health Education (S.H.E.) was a grassroots organization that paved the way for further women’s advocacy offices at Purdue. As is stated in a letter from one of its founders, Sisters for Health Education was “composed of women at Purdue and the surrounding community” in order to spread sexual knowledge. (4) S.H.E. was responsible for running sexual education training courses, rape training and counseling. They also lobbied for a gynecologist to be provided in Purdue’s student health center after a controversy surrounding a more conservative nurse purposely mistreating women patients because she believed they should face consequences for participating in sexual activity. (5) Upon discovery of the organization’s papers, which disbanded only a few years after its 1979 beginning, Dana Bisignani, a 2016 graduate assistant working in the Women’s Archives interpreted and analyzed the archival material before formatting a historical blog post over it. (6) Hence, I will not delve further into S.H.E.’s history, but rather, acknowledge its ‘future’ as the forefront for C.A.R.E.’s (Center for Rape, Advocacy, and Education) conception. 

                                                 Does Purdue C.A.R.E.?

     C.A.R.E. did not become established until 2015 (doors opened beginning the 2016-2017 academic year) due to years of pushback from the university.  Such was used in Purdue’s argument that no such advocacy center needed to be created because we already had this service to offer. In agreement with Purdue at the time, Alysa Rollock who oversaw the university’s anti-harassment policies as Title IX coordinator in 2015, maintained the stance that “it would not be an appropriate use of resources” despite “the idea for such a center” not being new and student groups having “raised the issue in the past.” (2) Four ‘trained staff members’ and rape kits were offered at C.A.P.S. (Counseling and Psychological Services) and P.U.S.H. (Purdue University Student Healthcenter) at the time, yet the offices were only receiving about 10 to 12 sexual assault cases a year. This provided evidence of a great amount of underreporting and lack of knowledge about the services offered when later compared to the percent of those assaulted annually at Purdue. Even when students were informed, survivors of sexual assault were most often refered to the Crisis Center in Lafayette, a near impossible destination for those without cars on campus nor the resources to get there another way. It was also true that student groups -both official and unofficial- such as the earlier S.H.E. and later Purdue Social Justice Coalition called for this type of center; many individual students themselves (Dana Bisignani included) wrote the university about these problems. In the meantime those organizations filled the role as education and peer support providers. With such strong feelings towards this topic being displayed by the students, I don’t understand how Purdue failed to recognize that creating an advocacy center would, in fact, be a fit use of resources.