Allie Moore (She, her, Hers), Student Staff Member The app Yik Yak was popular for our generation in 2016 then died down and was never heard from again. Until last spring when it started to pick up traction again on college campuses across the country.  Last night, on January 26th, 2022, a U of U […]

by Blessing Heelis, Undergraduate Staff, MCVP   Black minidress with puff sleeves, white sneakers, and my hair in pigtails: this is what I was wearing when my neighbor catcalled me. Earlier that morning while getting ready, I felt very cute. But after being catcalled, I felt gross. As my neighbor exclaimed, “Good Lord!” and stared […]

by Chris Linder, Director, MCVP This morning, as with most mornings, I opened my New York Times email to skim the headlines. I saw the headline, Missing Girl Is Rescued After Using Hand Signal From TikTok and sighed. Here we go again, I thought. Another story about how if girls just knew the right things […]

Allie Moore, Student Staff As the school year comes to a close, I think it is crucial to reflect on the turmoil of a year we have all experienced. It hasn’t all been miserable but it definitely has not been the best year ever. Through ups and downs, highs and lows this year has felt […]

 Michelle Valdes I took a Praxis Lab through the University of Utah Honors College in 2018-2019. A Praxis Lab is a year-long experiential course with a “theme” focused on real-world issues. The course is split into two parts, Fall and Spring. Fall, being utilized as a traditional education course and Spring shifting the focus to […]

By Brooke Adams Before the final tick of the clock ended the 2021 session of the Utah Legislature, lawmakers considered or acted on about a dozen bills related to the work of the McCluskey Center for Violence Prevention. While the center does not focus on response or policy, what happens more broadly on campus, in […]

Photo from USA Today As we keep listening to the news about the mass murder of primarily Asian women in Atlanta, we grow more and more disheartened by our society’s collective understanding of misogyny, white supremacy, and hate. Even more specifically, we are so over the ways we talk about white men’s violence – “he […]

Mary-Jo Dalton, Student Staff The McCluskey Center for Violence Prevention focuses on just that—prevention. The structure of the MCVP utilizes a power-conscious and intersectional framework. This framework guides the work of preventing relationship and sexual violence (RSV). The MCVP differs from other centers on campus in that our sole focus is primary prevention. We undertake […]

Caroline Lalliss, Student Staff Studies report that about one-third of college students have experienced physical or sexual violence in an intimate relationship. Disabled people experience intimate partner violence, or IPV, and relationship sexual violence, or RSV at approximately twice the rate of those without a disability. So when disabled students go to college they are […]

Tayler Bseiso, Student Staff Member Growing up I stayed with my grandparents a lot. When I was with them I would garden, bake desserts, and make crafts. Well, I guess I should say that I did all that with my grandma; my grandpa, on the other hand, played the perfect role of the stoic retired […]

 MJ Chevesich, Graduate Research AssistantThis post was originally going to be all about intersectionality, theory, and relationship sexual violence (RSV), but the more conversations I had with coworkers and family members about RSV and my role in the MCVP, I realized that before we can even talk about the complexities of identity and oppression, we […]

WHAT WE DO At THE U   On Monday, Sept. 21, 2020, President Ruth Watkins introduced the new McCluskey Center for Violence Prevention. The center’s inaugural director is Chris Linder, a professor in the College of Education and Special Assistant to the President for Violence Prevention and Education. Linder and the center’s advisory board introduced […]

Blessing Heelis, Student Staff Member Rates of campus sexual violence have not changed since 1957. Yes, really. This is a hard fact to swallow, especially in an age that feels progressive. The question then becomes, “how do we fix this?” Herein lies the complexity. An obvious solution is to spread awareness and create resources for […]

Tayler Bseiso, Student Staff Member When I was growing up, my mom was very paranoid. What made this worse was her love for the TV channel Investigation Discovery. This channel aired episode after episode of women after women being brutally murdered, with a splash of paranormal stories to break it up. When someone would bring […]

By Chris Linder, center director As we work to address relationship and sexual violence on college campuses and beyond, we often end up focusing on responding to violence after it happens, rather than working to prevent it from happening in the first place. Although some responses to relationship and sexual violence might also contribute to […]