EDITORIAL: No cuts, no excuses

• Tweet
• 

Prioritization is required as government funding and grants given to Central Michigan University continue to be cut.

Sexual Aggression Peer Advocates, a group that counsels victims of sexual abuse and spreads awareness of such crimes at CMU, should be a clear priority.

The group, which has become a national standard-bearer for groups dealing with prevention, education, advocacy and counseling involving sex-based crimes and acts of aggression, is at risk of losing a $300,000 federal grant. It has received the grant every three years since 2003.

The grant helps fund a dedicated SAPA counselor and the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, which is partially funded through Women’s Aid, which also lost grants put toward that program.

SANE allows victims of sexual assault to get treatment and testing they need in a safe, confidential environment without having to go to, or pay for, a hospital.

The services SAPA provides with the money from these grants are important. They are services needed on a campus the size of CMU.

Hopefully, SAPA will be granted this money, so it can continue its work. Barring that, hopefully another benefactor will step in and help with funding.

Given the economy, it is unlikely any outside assistance will emerge to save this essential program.

Thus, CMU’s path is clear.

In the event that SAPA loses its grant, the university should feel compelled to provide replacement funding.

If the university truly wishes to excel and break into the upper tier of higher education nationwide, like it so often says it does when justifying administrative wages and the construction of new buildings, it must preserve and embrace that which is already excellent.

University President George Ross pays the generous salaries of five deans of a College of Medicine which does not teach students or draw tuition, and will not do so until 2013.

He can find a way to pay $100,000 a year — less than half the average salary of one of those deans — to keep SAPA the best in the nation and a place of refuge for victims of a severely under-recognized problem.