Survivor advocate added to TU’s personal resources

TU named Emory Lazenby to the new position of Survivor Advocate in June.
She’s an employee of DVIS (Domestic Violence Intervention Services) who works with TU as an anonymous resource for students who have experienced sexual or relationship violence.
Since she is not officially employed by TU, she is not required to report anything about what victims tell her. She can, but only with a victim’s expressed permission.
Lazenby stressed that she’s here to serve “faculty, staff and students.” Anybody can be a victim of interpersonal violence.
She wants everybody to know that “you always have the option to report and talk to somebody”. Victims of interpersonal violence on this campus have many options, she said.
Of President Clancy’s new weekly emails, she said “they’re good. It increases people’s trust in TU. The more people who trust the system, the more people who are willing to report and bring the issues to light.”
Lazenby came to TU on a grant from the governmental Office on Violence Against Women, a part of the Department of Justice.
An alumna of TU, Lazenby studied anthropology and sociology while here.
For the past five years, she worked at Sand Spring’s DaySpring Villa as a case manager who dealt with victims of human trafficking and domestic violence.
“Change needs to happen at an individual level before it can happen on a community-wide one,” she said. “Sexual assault is an issue that does harm all of us, in one form or another.”
“I’m here to tell students they have a confidential resource for whatever violence they’ve experienced. Whether that’s dating violence, sexual assault, financial manipulation or stalking,” she said.
Lazenby deals with other forms of interpersonal violence as well.
Financial manipulation, in an interpersonal respect, is when one partner demands control over shared assets (mutual bank account, cars, homes, etc.).
Lazenby tries to be in her office as much as possible for walk-ins, but the best way is to contact her via email or phone to set up an appointment (elazenby@dvis.org, 918-631-2965, Hardesty Hall 3145).
TU also has an Advocacy Alliance, which “is an interdisciplinary, interdepartmental committee, which seeks to prevent and intervene with interpersonal violence on The University of Tulsa’s campus”.
The alliance puts on initiatives like: bystander intervention training, healthy relationship programming and the iStand campaign.
The student arm of the Advocacy Alliance is called SAVE. It holds events on campus designed to educate on different forms of interpersonal violence and ways students can prevent it.