Courtesy of Shayna Marlowe
By James Bennett III
Inside the campus’ Wellness Center, a slideshow plays over the reception desk that lists all the services that the center’s victim advocate offers.
There’s a problem, though: The victim advocate resigned on Jan. 3 — the third one to do so in less than two years.
A victim advocate’s job is to provide information, community referrals, and crisis response to USF St. Petersburg students who may be victims of crime such as date rape, assault or domestic violence.
Anita Sahgal, director of the Wellness Center and Student Disability Services, said her goal is to hire a new victim advocate by the end of the semester. The center has already begun the search.
In the meantime, Sahgal said, she hopes the counseling services, after-hours consultation services and student outreach and support services will meet most student needs.
Students are limited to 12 free individual therapy sessions per semester. Since there is no payment option for students who use all 12 sessions, Sahgal said, they would then be referred to a different service at the Wellness Center, such as group therapy — which has no limit — or they would be referred to an external provider.
“Keep in mind that most of our students don’t ever even use their 12,” Sahgal said. “The majority of our students are using less.”
There are four licensed therapists on staff at the Wellness Center, including Sahgal, who said she doesn’t do “as much of the clinical work.” There’s also one part-time therapist and two graduate interns who work under the center’s supervision.
When the Wellness Center is unable able to help a student, the staff will refer them to a community advocate.
Sahgal said that community advocates would be necessary to students who need information on legal processes or sexual assault victim examinations, which the Wellness Center doesn’t offer.
Sahgal said students who need a community advocate would likely be referred to CASA, a Pinellas County-based domestic violence center, since the Wellness Center already collaborates with the organization.
Until 2018, USF St. Petersburg didn’t have an on-campus victim advocate. Instead, the university contracted with Mandy Hines to provide on-call support. Hines filled that role from August 2006 until June 2018.
“It was very limited in what she was doing for the campus,” Sahgal said.
Hines’ replacement, Sara Spowart, was the first on-campus victim advocate. But she resigned after two months, citing health issues.
Then, after nearly three months, the university hired Shayna Marlowe, who resigned on Jan. 3.
In her resignation letter, Marlowe said she had accepted a position closer to northern Virginia, which she considers her home.
“We’re fortunate to have had Marlowe, even though it was for a year, because one of the things that was our goal when we hired the position was to help us really create a comprehensive advocacy and prevention program because we had never really had that,” Sahgal said.
“We feel like she really did get us on our way to doing that,” Saghal said. “Of course, there are always still things that we’re going to want to work on and improve on. But I think that she really helped us to get started on that.”
In her resignation letter, Marlowe said “the university as a whole would highly benefit from providing the Wellness Center with the necessary resources to carry out the delegated roles and responsibilities from upper administration.”
Marlowe did not respond to multiple voicemails from The Crow’s Nest. But Sahgal said she thinks the statement could be referring to the array of responsibilities Marlowe had to take on.
Sahgal explained that Marlowe’s job had three components — an advocacy role, a prevention role and a coaching role.
Sahgal said the prevention role was incorporated because it “hoped that somebody with that subject matter expertise could assist us in doing more prevention work.”
She added that the coaching role, which focused on helping students with skills like time management or setting goals, was part of a larger, system-wide initiative and that the Wellness Center has considered removing that role.
“She may have potentially been referencing the (university) consolidation process as well, in terms of if things are changing, if rules are changing, if expectations are changing,” Sahgal said.
“We didn’t have the program before she got here. I think her having to try to establish this program in the context of consolidation, I imagine was challenging.”
