The loss of the victim’s advocacy position is a tragedy, Niki Messmore, at-large senator, told the Undergraduate Student Government last night. Messmore spoke to senators at the meeting about the repercussions the loss of this position will have for the University community.

“It’s so hard for victims of sexual assault to come forward with their stories and to take away an on-campus avenue is a tragedy because less stories will be reported and less victims will be able to find the help the need,” Messmore said prior to the meeting.

One victim called the Women’s Center looking for advocacy yesterday, but had to be referred to Behavioral Connections in Bowling Green, according to Mary Krueger, director of the Women’s Center.

Although Behavioral Connections offers similar counseling through the safe advocate program, the services provided by the University’s victim advocate were unique because they were targeted toward the University community.

The advocate, Rebecca Theis, helped guide students through the student judicial process and acted as a liaison between professors and student victims who needed further time on assignments. The advocate also provided counseling services that were easily accessible to students because the service was on-campus, Krueger said.

The victim’s advocate position was cut by the University this week because a re-application for federal funds, which would have funded 40 percent of the advocate’s salary, was recently denied by the government.

Krueger wishes the federal government and the University would place higher importance on funding programs such as the victim’s advocate.

“I wish this was recognized as the important service that it is,” Krueger said. “The cost of this one person’s salary was so outweighed by the benefit.”

Messmore is also disappointed that the position was not given more priority. She hopes efforts will continue to be made by administrators to find alternate ways to fund the position.

“Investigation should be done by University administrators to find the funds and reallocate the funds in order to better serve the University community,” Messmore said.

Last year, Messmore helped found the Victim’s Advocacy Longevity Effort to fund raise for the Advocate’s salary.

VALE raised approximately $6,500 and helped keep the advocate for another nine months after the initial funding was cut. The rest of the salary was funded by $11,000 found by the Grants Accounting Office after an accounting error was discovered.

Messmore hopes VALE’s many efforts helped victims by extending the time that the advocate’s services were available.

“We worked so hard to fund raise the money and I just hope that, the time we got to keep her for the fund raising, we were able to help enough victims,” Messmore said.Krueger is proud of the efforts made by VALE, and said administrators had never seen students fund raise for a person’s salary before.

“I think that speaks volumes about how much students want this service,” Krueger said.

Chelsea Lambdin, west unit senator and co-founder of VALE, is equally upset about the loss of the advocate’s position.

Lambdin is a volunteer safe advocate at Behavioral Connections and believes the victim’s advocate position is necessary because of the high number of victims from Wood County helped by Behavioral Connections.

“We’re swamped basically,” Lambdin said.

Aaron Shumaker, USG president, expects senators to spearhead an effort to bring the position back and will help those senators in any way he can.

“It’s something we need on our campus,” Shumaker said. “Anything I can do to help those senators I will certainly do.”