For Leigh-Anne Royster, coordinator for personal health programs and community well-being at Elon, there are no typical days at the office.
She may teach a morning class and go to the hospital in the middle of the night with a student who has been sexually assaulted. She has spent countless hours in courtrooms accompanying victims through the legal process, talking to victims’ relatives and making phone calls to rearrange a victim’s class schedule or housing situation.
Other times, she simply listens. Even if she is in the middle of a meeting, or an interview as it was the case with this article for @Elon, Royster stops what she’s doing to make time for the student, the occasional faculty or staff member who seeks her help.
“It can be intense,” Royster says. “I do the job because I love it so much. This work is more to me than work. It’s a calling; it’s central to my identity.”
That’s because Royster, who was hired in 2005, the year the school created the position, knows all too well what victims of sexual assault go through.
At age 18, she was assaulted during her first year in college. Without a coping strategy at hand and not knowing where to go for help, Royster decided to keep the incident to herself.
“I didn’t even tell my college roommate; I had just met her,” she recalls. “I kept it inside for awhile.”
Looking for a way to heal, Royster started volunteering with other sexual assault victims. She soon found comfort and strength in that work, and in 1996 she started working with survivors of sexual violence at the Orange County (N.C.) Rape Crisis Center. She went on to work for a national violence prevention training initiative at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and was ready to look for out-of-state opportunities when she interviewed for the position at Elon. Seeing how the administration cared for and connected with students, she says, convinced her to stay in state.
Royster says she was careful to complete her own healing process before she started a career supporting other victims of domestic and sexual violence. Even now, at age 34, she sees pieces of herself in some of the students she works with. But, she adds, she knows how to keep her own boundaries.
Establishing relationships
Before creating Royster’s position, school officials relied on law enforcement and nonprofit community agencies to handle instances of violence or sexual assault on campus. In terms of education, there were only a handful of classes that dealt with domestic and sexual violence for students to choose from, Royster says.
Now, there are several educational opportunities for students in and out of the classroom, including orientation sessions for all first-year students. Equally important, students have a person on campus they can talk to confidentially at any time.
Royster says she seeks to help victims of violence in a holistic manner. In most sexual assault cases on campus, both the perpetrator and the victim are students, she says, which present unique issues: What if they share a class together, live in the same housing complex or belong to the same organization on campus? Royster’s job is to provide answers to all these questions with minimal impact on the victim.
“The work she does is so incredibly invaluable,” says senior Julia Telfer, team leader of SPARKS – Students Promoting Awareness, Respect, Knowledge and Success – who has worked with Royster as part of her role with the student group. “If I could pick one or two words to describe her they would be ‘passionate’ and ‘strong.’”
She continues, “She is on call 24/7. It takes a lot of dedication to do that.”
Looking ahead
Though conceptually her program has grown a lot, Royster says there is still much to be done to better serve students, including the development of programs focused on particular correlated issues, such as addressing violence among LGBT students.
“It’s really about changing the culture,” she says. “The more we have this conversation, the more educated and aware we are.”
Besides adding programming, she says the Sexual Assault and Gender Issues Council, a group of faculty, staff and students that advises her position, is currently working on a plan to request additional support for violence response services. Currently, Royster is the only person available to handle all response calls. On average, 32 to 50 students seek resources from her office each year.
If the proposal is approved, Royster will have more time to devote to education and awareness efforts. She currently teaches a class on interpersonal violence, something she would like to do more of because it allows her to talk to students about having healthy relationships before a crisis occurs.
After having taken the class, Telfer, a psychology major and public health studies minor, says she wishes every student on campus had the opportunity to take the class or hear Royster speak about how everybody is impacted directly or indirectly by violence and sexual assault, and how everybody can make a difference in preventing it.
“She really ignites a passion within people; her passion, intelligence and strength as a woman are very inspiring,” Telfer says. “Professionally, I want to take the issues I care about to bring awareness to my community and the world. She’s given me a model of how to do that.”
With the demands of her job, Royster says it’s difficult to achieve balance between her work and personal life. So how has this mother of three been able to remain on top of her game for the past five years?
“I have a very supportive partner,” she says of her husband, Shawn. “He recognizes the importance of my work. Without him I wouldn’t be able to do it.”
And though at times she feels sad for all the soccer games and school events she has missed, Royster doesn’t regret the many hours she has spent with Elon students during their times of crisis.
“When I see the difference my job does in helping a student to continue having a healthy relationship, it keeps me going,” she says.