The need for a Rape Crisis Counselor is on both the administration’s and students’ radar screen. Though students are honing in on the issue this week, the administration will continue to monitor the blip in the upcoming weeks and months.

This Thursday the Student Government Association will meet with Northeastern’s Feminist Student Organization to discuss the need for a full-time rape crisis counselor.

“The efforts of the NU Feminist Organization have undeniably been a major influence on campus in spreading educational information and sparking activism on the issue throughout campus,” said SGA Vice President for Student Affairs Michael Romano. “We continue to see a mounting presence of student groups come forward to speak on the issue … It seems apparent that only until these various student groups and leaders converge will the decision-makers concede that more needs to be done. Until that arises we will continue to derive our strength from the power of the student body in igniting change.”

Senior Vice President for Enrollment Management and Student Affairs Philomena Mantella explained that in the process of adding a counselor, be it for sexual assault crises or for other mental health purposes, a candidate must be carefully chosen in order to reflect the needs of the university and mesh with the Northeastern community.

“We want someone strong in mental health issues, because the area that is supervised by the vice president [of Student Affairs], is an area that needs strengthening,” said Sr. VP Mantella, adding that services need to expand with the on-campus population. “You don’t just fill up residence halls and become residential, it needs a range of services that would really build on equality for the total student experience.”

Mantella acknowledges that although sexual assault and rape may never disappear, students should be aware of their surroundings and the risks that are associated with them.

“It’s very unfortunate, but I think between alcohol, drugs, the casual associations people have, that the likelihood increases.”

Education is key. For too long, Northeastern has been reactive to rape, and the key, Mantella said, is to be proactive and reach out to the community.

“If we were to get a counselor … a part of their time has to be out there really doing programming, community awareness, making people know. Sometimes when you have sexual assault, you blame yourself for being in that room, for being somewhere, you don’t really know that you really have those rights and it wasn’t unreasonable,” she said. “You should get some support and figure out what you need to do. I see a lot of it being awareness building. I don’t see a caseload of 40 hours a week.”

With the vice president of student affairs post soon to be vacated by Karen Rigg, who is retiring early at the end of the academic year, timing is key to bring all possible candidates up to speed on the counseling services provided and what needs to be strengthened.

“If I were the candidate for VP, I would want to know, ‘This is an interest area, this is a concern and this is a recommendation or direction that the university already feels strong about,'” Mantella said. “I’m trying to make those things converge, probably in the summer, so appropriate action would be in place for next fall.”

Both issues will converge as two mental health consultants will be on campus May 20 and 21, meeting with administrators and counseling staff. Student Government Association Vice President of Student Affairs Michael Romano also hopes to be included in the meetings.

“I am hopeful that the specialists coming to campus will reaffirm what students have known for over a decade, that sexual assault is a serious issue on campus that continues to remain overlooked and under-prioritized,” Romano said.

The purpose of the consultants’ visit will be to consider models within the university that will enable Northeastern to increase access and effectiveness of the Center for Counseling and Student Development, the Lane Health Center and the Disability Resource Center. They will pay particular attention to issues of access to serve, referral procedures and an overall analysis of the coordination of services between the mental health and medical staff.

“When I took on the student affairs role, people came to see me on different issues and concerns. I think one of the concerns expressed pretty early on was the availability of counseling support,” Mantella said. “You’ve heard the SGA talk about the rape, sexual assault counselor, but also personal counseling, monitoring of medication, broader learning support, things of that nature.”

Other complaints Mantella has received are about wait times, or one service not seeming to work with another service when students have arrived at the health center. Or also, what she calls “a level of fragmentation.”

“And since the health center is more of a medical model and the counseling center has more of a psychological model, I thought it would be important to have people who were approaching it from both vantages, there wasn’t a bias in the model,” Mantella said. “So I started to look at two people, one out of a health center, one out of a counseling [center], that worked on other college campuses.”

Judith Mack, MA, MFT from the University of California at Davis and Harry Rockland-Miller, Ph.D from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will be the two consultants visiting at the end of May. Mack comes, from a counseling background, Rockland from mental health services.

“It worked out well to wrap into that, the concerns of SGA, around the level of support we have for students who have had an experience of sexual assault, which is also a concern.”

Students interested in sharing their experiences or voicing concerns with services can call Mantella’s office to arrange to meet with her and the consultants. This is the only real way, she said, that the university can supervise what level of counseling is being provided to students.

After the consultants visit, they will write up a report, which the new VP for Student Affairs will be able to use to assess the need for counseling, and possibly the addition of a Rape Crisis Counselor. As soon as the end of June, Mantella said, NU will have both the candidates for VP and the completed report. But she said she does not want to hire a counselor before appointing a new VP.

“I always feel that if you are hiring a new leadership position, you don’t necessarily want to say, ‘Welcome to Northeastern, I just made your last three hires in structural change, right before you came.'”

As for questions of funding, it does not seem to be a major issue.

“You could always use more resources, but I am not convinced yet that this is a funding question. I think Student Affairs and Enrollment Management as a division is pretty broad and has a considerable amount of resources. What we need to do is to figure out how to position them to priorities,” she said. “There may be a funding issue, I guess that is the short answer.”