On Thursday, Aug. 30, Counseling and Psychology Services along with the Office of Victim Assistance hosted two sessions concerning the stabbing at CU on August 27. Not a single student showed up to either meeting.
Late afternoon on Wednesday Aug. 29, all CU students received an email announcing the debriefings.
“All students are invited who would like to come together to talk with other community members about the impact this incident has had on them,” the e-mail said.
Many students felt that the stabbing was a freak occurrence, something that did not raise concerns about campus safety and did not relate to them.
“I thought they were just for people who were affected, like actually there,” freshman open option major Kathleen Brown said. “So I didn’t really think of anything like really going to it because I didn’t think it applied to me, because I didn’t know about it until like three hours after it happened.”
Although the witnesses were the easiest category of students impacted to pick out, they were not the only ones.
“Usually there are two types of impacts. One is if you were actually there and witnessed the event, and another is if you weren’t there but it really starts to impact your feeling of safety and things like that,” said Jan Johnson a psychologist in Counseling and Psychology Services . “I think both individuals are impacted differently.”
Neither Johnson nor Mary Friedrichs, director of the Office of Victim Assistance, who hosted the debriefings, seemed concerned by the lack of student presence. Along with the faculty and staff that attended their own separate debriefing, a large number of parents have contacted the offices concerned. In both offices, the staff gave parents as much information as they could and coached parents through talking with their children.
“Our office does outreach to all of the people we are aware of who were impacted,” said Friedrichs on what the Office of Victim Assistance does in crisis situations on campus. “For example, we were on scene Monday morning talking to witnesses. After they had talked to the police and the detectives and given their stories, we talked with them. Most of them were just exhausted and wanted to go away, but I just said, ‘Can we call you in a couple days and see how you are doing and check in on you?’ and we’ll do that.”
While some students do not want or need support services after an incident, Friedrichs feels confident that just the presence of a center like Victim Assistance can be support in an of itself.
“Even if they don’t come in, the fact that somebody is asking just matters,” Friedrichs said.
Johnson mentioned that a few students had stopped in to the office of Counseling and Psychology Services for someone to talk to about the stabbing.
“We are a free service. Students can actually just walk in our center, they don’t even need an appointment initially, and there will always be a counselor available to talk to them,” said Johnson noting that at Wardenburg Health Center, the services are not free.
The services offered by the two offices are confidential. Along with offering assistance in crisis, Counseling and Psychology Services has a psychologist assigned to each residence hall and host office hours at various remote locations around campus like Williams Village and Kittredge. The Office of Victim Assistance provides advocacy in any situation where someone is a victim, as outlined on their Web site, and will walk students through their different options in reporting an issue.
Just because the offices are kept busy by the number of other services they offer, however, does not mean that they believe the lack of student involvement in the debriefings means a lack of feeling, and that their services are no longer needed concerning the stabbing.
“Many times when something very disturbing like this happens people will find that over time they are realizing that there is more impact than they thought in the beginning,” Friedrichs said. “So that if people a week or two, or even a month or two, down the road start to notice that they are not sleeping or they are having more anxiety attacks or feeling really unsafe and scared, or whatever, that they should come seek services and that is a normal response pattern.”
Students can utilize the walk-in services at either office Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Office of Victim Assistance is located in Willard Hall, room 219 and Counseling and Psychology Services is located in the Willard Administrative Center room 134.
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Margot Schneider at margot.schneider@thecampuspress.com.
