EmPOWER Center for Violence Prevention & Advocacy Opens on Campus
EmPOWER, the Claremont University Consortium’s first sexual assault prevention and support center, opened its doors to the community on January 28, 2016. Rima Shah, who previously worked as a sexual health and violence prevention specialist at DePaul University in Chicago, was hired as the Center’s inaugural director.
The Center was the result of strong collaborative effort across the Claremont Colleges. The creation of a sexual assault resource center for the Claremont Colleges was proposed last spring to the President’s Council by the Student Deans Committee, which then solicited feedback from outside consultants as well as students, faculty, and staff from across the consortium, who all voiced a need for a resource center.
One of the central components of the Center’s mission is to provide a space where students impacted by sexual or relationship violence can confidentially receive care and support in the form of specialized counseling services and peer discussions. EmPOWER also brings an inclusive and safe environment to campus where students can ask questions, share concerns, and collaborate for programming, as well as consortium-wide education and outreach initiatives around sexual and relationship violence.
As the inaugural director of the center, Shah will work to make the Center an effective resource for consortium-wide sexual and relationship violence prevention programming, educational outreach, and student support. On what prompted her to advocate for sexual violence prevention and awareness, Shah said, “It is a great opportunity to provide leadership to a new Center that will serve seven outstanding colleges and that is devoted to the issues I am most passionate about: violence prevention and student support. Furthermore, I believe for any initiative to be effective, it must be informed by the needs of the community it serves.” Shah was further drawn in to advocate for these issues at the Claremont Colleges by the fact that the creation of the EmPOWER Center was the direct result of the needs expressed by and input provided by students, staff, and faculty.
In their ongoing efforts to address sexual assault, the Claremont Colleges were among 57 institutions to administer the Higher Education Data Sharing (HEDS) Consortium’s Sexual Assault Campus Climate Survey last semester. Shah says that this year’s results were in line with the reality of sexual assault across college campuses nationwide, and they reinforce the fact that more progress needs to be made. She looks forward to using the data from this survey to inform the work of the EmPOWER Center with respect to both campus-specific and consortium-wide programming and support.
Shah envisions the Center as a safe space for students to seek care and support in confidentiality. She hopes that students use the Center “as a place they can seek out for answers to their questions or concerns around sexual or relationship violence, and as a place they can collaborate with for campus-specific and consortium-wide educational and prevention programming.” Her dream campus is a place with no violence, where everyone looks out for one another, and where people feel safe, respected, heard, and cared for. She invites the 7C community to visit the EmPOWER Center at 1030 N. Dartmouth Avenue seek support and get educated.
