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The University News

The Student News Site of Saint Louis University

The University News

The Student News Site of Saint Louis University

The University News

Nation’s Only On-Campus Domestic Shelter Receives Grant For Expansion

(U-WIRE) EAST LANSING, Mich.-Michigan State University’s Safe Place, the only on-campus domestic violence shelter in the country, will receive more than $418,000 to expand its services to the community.

The money is part of the $8.1 million grant from the U.S. Justice Department’s Violence Against Women Office. The office received 125 applications for grant money.

“Your normal domestic violence program focuses on women and families but not students who have very special needs,” said Joanne McPherson, the wife of MSU President M. Peter McPherson, who founded the shelter in 1994. “We really are expanding much quicker than expected because the needs are so specific here,” she said.

MSU Safe Place offers temporary emergency shelter to students, faculty and staff members, as well as providing workshops on domestic violence issues and counseling to help students who experience abuse.

The program is also one of only a handful of programs offering shelter to men, McPherson said.

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The money will be used to hire a full-time advocacy coordinator, a part-time administrative assistant, a full-time outreach position to MSU’s Counseling Center Sexual Assault Crisis and Safety Education Program and a full-time advocacy position to the Capitol Area Response Effort, known as CARE. The program sends volunteers to provide aid to families when police make a domestic violence arrest.

“Without the grant, we’d keep doing what we’ve been doing for the last five years, but it’s so important to expand and do more,” said MSU Safe Place Director Holly Rosen.

The money will also be used to translate sexual assault literature into ten languages for the international population at MSU.

Rosen said because Safe Place workers do not always speak the language of people they help, the shelter must hire translators who are untrained in dealing with domestic violence. The money could be used to give those translators sensitivity training.

“We have to try to find a translator, and we have to trust the language we want is conveyed,” she said. “We need translator training on sexual violence issues.”

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