By
Michelle McCollum
Arizona Summer Wildcat
The Oasis Center, the University of Arizona's center for relationship violence and sexual assault, could lose as many as 10 staff members if funding from the U.S. Department of Justice does not continue this fall.
"It's alarming and concerning," said Matt Sanders, assistant director of the Oasis Center. "Some people's salaries are relying on what happens September 31."
On Sept. 31, the Department of Justice will decide which universities will receive a portion of the $8.1 million in Grants to Combat Violence Against Women. Only 21 schools are given money.
But Irene Anderson, director of the Oasis Center, said the possibility of not receiving the grant is slim.
"I'd say I'm 90 to 99 percent sure we're going to get it," Anderson said. "We got a call from Washington a week from this past Tuesday saying that (the Department of Justice) was interested in continuing our funding. That's the next best thing to being informed that we got the grant. I'd be extremely surprised if we didn't get it now."
Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that the grant money will be awarded to the center, Anderson said. If it is not, cuts in the programs will be necessary because the center cannot ask more money from the university board of directors.
"On July 1, the fiscal budget (for the UA) was decided on and we will all be living with that for two years," Anderson said. "The university, however, has given us more money than most schools give organizations of our sort. And we do accept private donations, but we've never elicited them from anyone. We accept small amounts from various organizations."
Without the grant money, not only would the Oasis Center staff be cut from 13 to three people, but it would also have to cut the number of people it helps via crisis counseling and victim advocacy, Sanders said.
"People come to us because they know we can help," Sanders explained. "The more we get ourselves out there, the more people come in."
"It's annoying because you get a lot of money," he continued. "Then you expand your program, and then you have to re-apply or you lose the money."
A two-year grant of $421,006 was awarded to the Oasis Center by the Department of Justice in 1999, and Sanders said the center has used that money to develop all aspects of its mission.
"Our commitment to social change is the foundation to the work we do," Anderson said. "We've been able to make visible the kinds of services available and maintain a database to accurately know who it is we're serving and what kinds of things they're experiencing."
With the grant money, the Oasis Center was also able to create more education and prevention outreach programs about sexual assault and creating mandatory orientation about violence against women for all new undergraduate and graduate students.
"We were able to do all those things because we had a broad staff," Sanders said. "When we started here six years ago, we had a staff of two (people). We relied on the help of AmeriCorps workers and volunteers, and these people would come and go. The grant money gave us permanent people."
