For more than 6,000 students living north of campus, UW emails reporting assault, theft and other acts of violence hit close to home. While campus and city police are working together to react to off-campus emergencies, the UW has also released several preventative measures to help students find help before it’s too late.

After the April 2007 murder of Rebecca Griego in Gould Hall, UW President Mark Emmert appointed an advisory committee to look at safety concerns bordering the University campus. Their solution was SafeCampus, the UW’s Violence Prevention and Response Program.

“One of the first recommendations of the committee was to establish SafeCampus telephone lines,” SafeCampus manager David Girts said. “The idea was to have one point of contact to report non-urgent violence.”

On the SafeCampus Web site in bold red font, it states: “Preventing violence is everyone’s responsibility.” Girts stressed the importance of everyone doing their part to prevent violence at the UW.

“Part of that responsibility is talking to somebody,” he said.

A UW sophomore, who wishes to remain anonymous, called UW’s Sexual Assault and Referral Information Service (SARIS) when her roommate’s behavior raised concern.

“[My roommate] would sit in the dark in the corner of our room,” she said. “She would have her hood up staring at her computer. … Sometimes she’d be in tears [but] she didn’t want to talk.”

Girts said that victims of relationship violence are reluctant to talk because of the shame involved. But, as a former UW police chief, he believes relationships are the starting point of most violence in college.

“Over the last 30 years, of the really violent things that have happened on campus, five of six homicides were related to relationship or domestic violence,” he said.

“College women are four times as likely to be assaulted as women of other ages,” said Melissa Tumas, a sexual assault and relationship violence specialist at SARIS.

The goal of SafeCampus is to put students in contact with other campus resources such as residence advisors, the Counseling Center or SARIS. In more serious cases, they put together a response team to come up with an action plan.

“Say there are two roommates and one notices that the boyfriend of the other roommate doesn’t treat her well [and] he is overbearing and demeaning,” Girts said. “One of the first things we do is try to get roommate number one to get number two to call us. Then we would talk to number one about how to talk to number two.”

Unfortunately, the anonymous UW sophomore didn’t even know SafeCampus existed when she tried to get help for her roommate.

“We contacted SARIS [but] it wasn’t that helpful,” she said. “They just said to have [my roommate] come and see them. There was not really any advice for us as roommates.”

The sophomore wishes SARIS had been able to give more specific advice to her situation and not just referred her to the SARIS pamphlet.

“It was hard to sit and watch someone go through that and not be able to do anything,” she said.

According to Tumas, relationship violence prevention is difficult to perfect because it is such a complex issue, but she is optimistic about what SARIS can do for students.

“I am there for the survivor. Those that feel like they’ve lost control,” she said. “I give them back control. It’s about empowering them to make these decisions. It’s about coping.”

SafeCampus plans to have an information campaign in May to inform students about SARIS and other resources available at UW.