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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