Meeting the needs of all victims: A necessity and a challenge for on-campus victim services agencies

• In Event: Research on crime and justice in educational institutions

Abstract

In this presentation we discuss a community-based research project focusing on strategies for an on-campus victim advocacy unit to work toward its goals of inclusivity and representativeness, despite significant staffing and funding inadequacies. Beginning with a discussion of the gap between the organization’s goals to meet the needs of the diverse population of students on the campus and its current potentially inadequately representational clientele, we center the agency’s barriers to representativeness, both historical and perceived. Interpolating from extant data and advocate interviews, we highlight missing information and people as spaces of intervention. We then complex these narratives with interview and focus group data from prospective agency partners and student constituency groups to identify and problem-solve opportunities for outreach and relationship-building, in the context of current best practice models. We conclude our presentation by assessing the transformative viability of such a change project without additional resources, even while the agency holds itself accountable to its inclusivity goals.

Authors

• Michelle Hughes Miller, University of South Florida

• Megan Deremiah, University of South Florida