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NEWS

Thursday, June 14, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
UHS exams help victims 

U-M provides on 
campus support 
for sexual assault 
survivors

By ALICE TRACEY

Summer Daily News Editor

University Health Servic-
es, the University of Michi-
gan’s student health center, 
is offering sexual assault 
exams administered on-site 
by trained sexual assault 
nurse examiners rather than 
making students travel to the 
emergency room after an inci-
dent. The service is designed 
to improve students’ access 
to examinations and provide 
care in a more comfortable 
and convenient environment.
According to Susan Ernst, 
the chief of the UHS Women’s 
Health Clinic, going to the 
emergency room after sexual 
assault can cause anxiety for 
a variety of reasons.
“We felt it was important to 
try to offer the SANE exams 
on the college campus really 
for the convenience of the 
students and to reduce the 
stress after sexual assault,” 
Ernst said. “Students might 
worry about trying to go over 
to the emergency department 
that they might get their 
insurance billed or that their 
parents might find out.”
UHS services are mostly 
free for students. Ernst added 
traveling to the emergency 
room can feel more intimi-
dating than going to UHS — a 
smaller, quieter setting with 
which students may already 
be familiar.
According to the website 
of the University’s Sexu-
al Assault Prevention and 
Awareness Center, the health 
service 
receives 
approxi-
mately 70,000 visits every 
year.
The SANE program was 
established in 2015 after the 
Association of American Uni-
versities published a survey 
exposing the prevalence of 
sexual assault on 27 cam-
puses, including the Univer-
sity of Michigan. The report 
found 30 percent of under-
graduate women had experi-

enced non-consensual sexual 
contact during their time at 
the University, compared to 
23 percent across all partici-
pating schools.
The University indepen-
dently conducted a follow-
up survey, which found 22 
percent 
of 
undergraduate 
women had experienced non-
consensual contact in the last 
year.
Ernst said the data were 
almost more worrying than 
the results of the AAU survey, 
because they revealed a high 
percentage of sexual assault 
over a shorter period of time.
The sexual assault sta-
tistics 
motivated 
student 
activists to reach out to 
University 
administration, 
which in response worked 
with UHS to set up a SANE 
program. Ernst said UHS had 
been considering the idea for 
a while, but the students who 
approached the administra-
tion with their concerns gal-
vanized the movement.
Public Policy senior Daniel 
Greene, Central Student Gov-
ernment president, and CSG 
Vice President Isabel Baer, 
an LSA junior, wrote in a 
joint email interview student 
involvement plays a critical 
role in confronting sexual 
assault.
“Addressing sexual assault 
requires 
a 
campus-wide 
effort,” 
Greene 
and 
Baer 
wrote. “The fact that 1 in 5 
females and 1 in 16 males are 
sexually 
assaulted 
during 
their undergraduate experi-
ence is unacceptable. Stu-
dent advocates on this issue, 
including 
ourselves, 
are 
continuing to examine the 
campus culture surrounding 
sexual misconduct.”
Because there were already 
sexual assault nurse examin-
ers working in the emergency 
center at the U-M hospital, 
the University did not need 
to hire new staff in order to 
make sexual assault exams 
available on campus. The 
trained nurses have specif-
ic on-call hours for sexual 
assault exams, so UHS asked 
the nurses to be available at 
both locations.

‘U’ Funds Environmental Projects

By KATHERINA SOURINE

Daily Staff Reporter 

Three research projects target-
ing socio-environmental sustain-
ability have received, in total, more 
than $200,000 from the Univer-
sity’s Graham Sustainability Insti-
tute. The projects tackle a range of 
sustainability-related issues, from 
green energy in Detroit to energy 
and food systems in Puerto Rico.
Paul Draus, a professor of soci-
ology at U-M Dearborn, serves as 
a researcher on the Green Energy 
Village in Detroit Eastern Market 
project, which received a $10,000 
Catalyst Grant. The first phase of 
the project, he explained, includes 
installing two upcycled wind tur-
bines in the Eastern Market, with 
plans to eventually develop a fea-
sibility plan for a microgrid: the 
Green Energy Village.
“Our hopes are that this public 
demonstration and the feasibility 
research that we conduct using the 
resources from the Catalyst Grant 
will enable us to leverage resources 
for a transformational upcycling/
green energy enterprise based in 
Detroit,” Draus explained. “Which 
saves resources at both ends — uti-
lizing discarded materials and local 
labor to create high-value machines 
that harvest energy from the wind 
and enhance the city’s overall resil-
ience.”
Juliette Roddy, professor of pub-
lic policy at U-M Dearborn, high-
lighted the multifaceted nature of 
the project, outlining the factors 
of economic effectiveness, envi-
ronmental efficiency and aesthetic 
implementation to the market. She 

emphasized the work of Carl 
Neibock, the designer and producer 
for the Green Energy Village, who 
developed the project through his 
vision of the potential of recycled 
windmills.
“Eastern Market is a valuable 
social space in Detroit and I believe 
that the combination of function 
and art/aesthetic will appeal to 
those who frequent the market,” 
Roddy said. “The windmills will 
easily charge a cell phone, a speak-
er for music, a laptop or — and I 
haven’t seen this yet, but Carl has 
great faith — an electric vehicle. 
The beauty and the practicality will 
inspire the Eastern Market visitors. 
I look forward to contributing to 
that.”
The second project, Reimagin-
ing Puerto Rico’s Energy and Food 
Systems 
through 
Community 
Engagement and Industrial Symbi-
osis, received the $200,000 Trans-
formation Grant. The project aims 
to work with community organi-
zations to solidify a system which 
manages agricultural production, 
food waste, gasification and energy 
production.
The project uses efforts from the 
University and Puerto Rican col-
lege students, as well as local non-
profits, to establish food and energy 
sectors in the mountain
side town of Adjuntas, which 
continued to experience difficulties 
with electricity and food and water 
access more than five months after 
Hurricane Maria.
In addition to volunteer work, 
the project will implement four 
hybrid solar/biomass gasification 
micro-grid systems. These systems 

will be subsequently monitored for 
their effectiveness and sustainability 
within their communities.
The third research project, Col-
laborative Assessment of Stormwa-
ter Runoff on Tribal Lands, was also 
awarded a $10,000 Catalyst Grant. 
The initiative was formed by a col-
laboration between the Great Lakes 
Integrated Sciences and Assessments 
Center and the Inter-Tribal Council 
of Michigan, in response to exten-
sive flooding which led to significant 
damage to the Lake Superior Tribe of 
Chippewa Indians in 2016. The flood-
ing highlighted the vulnerability of 
the community’s infrastructure and 
the need for preventative strategies 
for these extreme weather events.
The initiative outlines a process of 
researching the frequency and effects 
of rainfall per year in these communi-
ties, as well as assisting tribes in imple-
mentation of infrastructure that could 
decrease the effects of stormwater 
run-off. U-M Researcher Frank Mar-
sik offered semi-permeable pavement 
for parking lots and construction of 
street-side rain gardens as examples of 
potential solutions. “Given that many 
of the Indigenous Tribes are resource 
limited, both in terms of staffing and 
funding,” Marsik said, “our project will 
assist these Tribes to not only quantify 
the potential stormwater run-off given 
the specifics of the community’s land 
use practices, but our project will also 
help the Tribes to understand what 
practices (and their associated costs) 
could be implemented to reduce 
potential magnitude of stormwa-
ter run-off.”

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Graham Sustainability Institute provides thousands in grants

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

ALEC COHEN / DAILY

