Our History and Principles
History
After Title IX was enacted in 1972, Safe Place services were officially introduced to the CSU, Chico campus in January 2010. Local colleges and advocacy organizations partnered up to create a department that would facilitate healing for individuals impacted by harm. Unfortunately, due to the grant issued by the Department of Justice expiring, Safe Place had to close its doors in early 2012. Due to activism and student involvement Safe Place was able to open back up after just three weeks. Safe Place was then officially institutionalized in Fall 2012.
Wellcat Safe Place (WCSP) envisions a campus community free from sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and stalking.
Guiding Principles
- Survivor Centered: Each individual experience of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and stalking is unique and complex. We strive to provide individualized support and empower individuals to utilize autonomy and self-determination.
- Intersectionality: We acknowledge that everyone holds multiple identities that weave together to create one complex being that impacts healing and growth.
- Advocacy: Understanding advocacy as an individual and/or collective experience in our campus community, we strive to be intentional in providing direct, outreach, and educational services that foster short- and long-term change.
- Cultivating Future Leaders: Providing internship opportunities to interdisciplinary students. WCSP commits to introducing a world of advocacy by offering opportunities that foster change, growth, and development.
- Restorative Healing: Promoting healing spaces through multiple avenues that support individualized journeys of growth.
Vision
We strive to create a culture of consent and healthy relationships that foster a campus environment free of interpersonal harm for all students, faculty, and staff at Chico State. All of our services are free, confidential, and voluntary.
WellCat Safe Place recognizes that sexual assault, intimate partner abuse, sexual exploitation, stalking, and harassment can happen to anyone regardless of their age, race, sexual orientation, mental and physical ability, religion, gender identity, immigration status, or socioeconomic status.
Mission
We provide confidential advocacy services for students, faculty, & staff impacted by sexual assault, intimate partner abuse, sexual exploitation, stalking, and harassment. We offer advocacy support, prevention education, and linkage to services on and off campus.
We must acknowledge that much of what we know of this country today, including its culture, economic growth, and development throughout history and across time, has been made possible by the labor of enslaved Africans and their ascendants who suffered the horror of the transatlantic trafficking of their people, chattel slavery, and Jim Crow. We are indebted to their labor and their sacrifice, and we must acknowledge the tremors of that violence throughout the generations and the resulting impact that can still be felt and witnessed today
We acknowledge and are mindful that Chico State stands on lands that were originally occupied by the first people of this area, the Mechoopda, and we recognize their distinctive spiritual relationship with this land, the flora, the fauna, and the waters that run through campus.
We are humbled that our campus resides upon sacred lands that since time immemorial have sustained the Mechoopda people and continue to do so today.