Ti'Air Riggins didn't know what to do or where to go when she was sexually assaulted her first semester at Purdue University.
It took awhile for the biomedical engineering Ph.D. student to come to grips with what happened. When she finally went to the university and police, she had destroyed the evidence. Riggins said she likely wouldn't have destroyed it, however, if the school had more easily accessible resources for sexual assault victims.
“I feel if I would have had something here, if I knew what to do with (the evidence) at that point in time, I would have handled it better,” she said.
Riggins, who started the Students Against Rape and Violence group last spring, is hopeful Purdue's planned center for victims of assault, relationship violence and stalking will prevent other students from having to go through an experience similar to hers.
CARE — the Center for Advocacy, Response and Education — will be in Windsor Hall and open to students in August. The school is in the process of hiring a director and will hold open meetings for the candidates next week.
Representatives for the center have been trying to gauge what services students need and want from it since university President Mitch Daniels announced the school's plan to create CARE in September on the heels of an Association of American Universities report that found almost 22 percent of surveyed female undergraduates at Purdue said they had been sexually assaulted since entering the West Lafayette campus.
The announcement also came after a years-long push by students to create a designated rape crisis center on campus.