LSU Student Government and the Student Health Center teamed up to create We’re Committed. We’re Committed is an initiative to end sexual violence on LSU’s campus. Reporter Courtney Allen sat down with Student Body President Andrew Mahtook to learn more.
“Through the We’re Committed campaign, we hope to decrease the instances of sexual violence on LSU’s campus and make campus a safer place for all students,” Mahtook said.
The Lighthouse Program is part of the We’re Committed campaign. It is a free and confidential resource for victims of sexual violence on campus. Sophomore Camille Faircloth is the Student Advocate for Sexual Assault on campus, and she works as a liaison between the program and the student body.
“That’s where the student advocate to student government connection comes into play is connecting the Lighthouse program, the Women’s Center and the Student Health Center.” Faircloth said. “All of that, connected to campus.”
The Lighthouse Program coordinator Sierra Fowler said that there are over 100 professors involved on campus.
“We train advocates across campus that are staff and faculty,” Fowler said, “because we recognize that students have relationships with their teachers, their professors and things like that and they may feel more comfortable disclosing something as serious and as personal as a sexual assault so we want to make sure we have staff members on campus.”
The program provides a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) for students for testing, rape kits and medications, but Fowler said that all of Lighthouse’s services are completely optional.
“We let them decide what they want to do,” Fowler said. “We don’t want to pressure anyone into doing anything that they don’t want to do or that they’re not ready to do.”
Fowler said that time does not matter. Lighthouse’s services are always available for students, and the program encourages students to contact them at any time regardless of when the assault occurred.
“You know it could be a year ago, it could be two years ago, because we know these impacts could last a really long time,” Fowler said. “So we want to support our students and it doesn’t matter when it happened. And there’s also no expiration date on our services.”
The Lighthouse Program is a resource for victims of sexual violence, but its services also extend to include victims of domestic violence, relationship violence, stalking and harassment. Visit lsu.edu/lighthouse or contact 225-578-5719 for more information.