Division of Student Affairs

Fall 2022 — What does a trauma-informed university look like?

It is where advocacy and survivor services are connected to training and education for the entire community and where students, staff and faculty see themselves reflected in this work, says the leadership of the Center for Advocacy, Prevention & Education (CAPE).

CAPE, co-directed by Elizabeth Kennedy and Allison Riser, is a newly formed center within Student Health Services that reflects the Division of Student Affairs and Oregon State University’s ongoing community-wide efforts regarding interpersonal and gender-based violence prevention, response and support. OSU’s advocacy team (formerly the Survivor Advocacy & Resource Center) and the interpersonal violence prevention team within Student Health Services joined together to form CAPE.

The center embraces the idea of stopping violence from occurring, a concept known as primary prevention. It’s a change from countering incidents of harm with policy and response, explains Elizabeth Kennedy, director of gender-based violence prevention.

“When we use strategies addressing the root causes of violence, it creates a more lasting change,” says Kennedy. “Prevention is possible when it’s rooted in community engagement.”

Making strides in prevention requires the engagement of the entire community, says Kennedy. Kennedy believes that moving together we can create a university environment “where interpersonal and gender-based violence is not tolerated and eventually eliminated.”

Coming in 2023, there will be an enhanced online training for all students new to Oregon State, including OSU-Cascades and Ecampus students, being developed by the CAPE prevention team.

“It will be an introduction to folks joining OSU about what it means to be a part of this community,” Kennedy says. “My hope is that students are doing this work with us. Their voices matter just as much as anyone else’s in this space.”

Kennedy plans to expand partnerships across OSU to build upon the university-wide effort to eliminate interpersonal and gender-based violence. “We are really fortunate at OSU to have student affairs practitioners, research faculty and people with a wealth of experience in gender-based violence,” Kennedy says. “There is such great potential when we’re moving together.” Community members are encouraged to explore ways they can support gender-based violence prevention, request a prevention workshop for their class or student group, or contact the prevention team about other ways to engage.

The survivor and advocacy side of CAPE continues current services, combining them with prevention. Allison Riser, who has worked with survivors of gender-based violence since 1999, was hired in 2022 as director of survivor advocacy.

While prevention used to be housed separately from survivor advocacy, bringing them together has been effective in other higher education settings, Riser explains. “We’re working together to make sure that all of our programming is complementary,” she says. “We want to make information and services as accessible to everybody as we possibly can.”

Advocacy is one of many ways to raise awareness of violence prevention. It also recognizes that caring for survivors doesn’t happen in isolation. Oregon State’s highly collaborative and evolving approach to survivor care and violence prevention partners CAPE, Counseling & Psychological Services, the Office of Equal Opportunity and Access, OSU Police and several other departments and programs.

“It really takes our entire community to be engaged and involved for us to ensure that we’re providing stronger outcomes for survivors and the best services for our community,” Riser says. Whether a survivor makes a disclosure to a peer, a professor, an advisor or an advocate, the hope is that the response is supportive and knowledgeable. “In that moment, we want people to know how to respond to trauma in an informed way and to know about support resources.” 

For additional information, visit OSU’s web page on building a trauma-informed university, a hub for gender-based violence prevention and advocacy resources, including CAPE.