Campus offers variety of services for students, employees to handle relationship violence

04 April 2001 | The incidence of relationship violence is epic in proportion. Experts and dozens of studies have shown that a woman in the United States is more likely to be killed by her partner than by any other assailant.

That message was driven home here in late February, when a 34-year-old Berkeley sociology student — just one month shy of earning her bachelor’s degree and launching a teaching career — was gunned down on her front porch. Shocked by the incident, the Campus Police Department’s Threat Management Unit, professional health service counselors and social workers held a domestic violence fair within a week of Patricia Anne Kualapai’s murder and sponsored a workshop in late March to bring campus and community crisis services together.

“Domestic violence tends be misunderstood,” said Steve Haire, a clinical social worker in campus police’s Threat Management Unit, who counsels victims and frightened individuals on domestic violence law and other avenues of protection. “It includes battery, being shoved or physically abused, or verbally abused, but it also applies to many different personal relationships, including past and present marriages, cohabitation, dating relationships and those who have children in common.”

“Cohabitants, those who are not married, and who are between the ages of 20 and 30, are at highest risk of relationship violence,” added Melinda Shrock, a member of Berkeley’s Family Violence Law Center, who divides her time there with intervention assistance and crisis counseling in the campus police department. “That covers a lot of the student population.”

Although community statistics are beginning to show a slight decline in the number of domestic violence incidents, the campus community is urged to use the reference guide below for crisis intervention, referrals, safe university housing on a temporary or permanent basis, and immediate assistance with threatening situations.

RESOURCE GUIDE (All services are in the 510 area code.)
Berkeley Campus Police Department 

Threat Management Unit: 642-6760 (general) 
or 911 (emergency)

University Health Services assistance programs (housed in the Tang Center):

CARE Services for faculty and staff: 643-7754
Social Services/Sexual Assault Counseling for students: 642-6074
Counseling and Psychological Services for students: 642-9494  

Other University Health Services programs:
Student Parent Project (for children at risk of abuse): 643-5729
Risk Assessment of Violence: 642-6621
Sexual Assault Education and Response: 642-6074

Other Campus Resources:

Residential and Student Services: 526-8505, ext.12 
Gender and Equity Resources Center’s Sexual Assault, Harassment Support Services: 643-5730
Gender and Equity Resources Center’s Sexual Harassment Education Program: 643-5730
Human Resources-Employee Relations,for work-related concerns: 642-9479
Office of Student Judicial Affairs: 643-9069 

Community Resources:
Family Violence Law Center, Berkeley: 540-5370
Berkeley Mobile Crisis Unit: 644-8566
Bay Area Black Consortium for Quality Health Care: 261-6096
Narika, for Asian and Middle Eastern people: 540-0754
Berkeley WorkSource, Berkeley: 644-6085
La Familia, for Latinos: 881-5921