Currently, the University of Southern California does not have the means to administer a rape kit on campus, because the Engemann Health Center does not employ a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE). If a student wanted to seek help after a rape, they would have to go to the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica. Traveling to a location over 30 minutes away is unnecessary and makes it difficult for victims seeking aid. I believe that if the USC Health Center employed a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner on campus, victims would feel more comfortable to seek help after a rape or sexual assault. This petition can make a difference by letting the administration and Health Center know that this is a very prevalent issue that needs to be addressed in order to help the student body feel safer here at USC.

For example, a friend of mine believes she was drugged at a party one Friday night. Saturday morning she woke up unsure of what happened the night before. She arrived at the Health Center here on campus to be examined to see if she was sexually assaulted, but was turned away. She was told that in order to get a rape kit and see a SANE, she needed to go to the UCLA Medical Center. Alone and scared, she decided she could not put herself through the burden of traveling to Santa Monica to see if she may or may not have been raped. If the Health Center employed a SANE, this student could have sought help in the Health Center in a comfortable and convenient environment, like she intended to.

All the University needs to do to fix this simple, yet serious problem, is hire a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner to be on-call 24/7, so that if a student wants to see one, they have to option to do so on campus. The majority of Universities in the United States employ a SANE, and there is no reason why USC should not do the same.

Below is a link that shows how the University of Virginia handles rape on their campus by hiring a 24/7 on-call SANE, and the University’s reasoning for hiring one. Overall this is a pressing and critical issue that can be solved easily, and would make USC a safer and more comfortable campus for students.

http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/emergency-medicine/clinicalservices/forensic-page