Olivia Rine, Staff Writer
VCU has taken several measures to combat the “Red Zone,” referring to the period where college students are at the highest risk of sexual assault at the start of fall semester classes to Thanksgiving break.
Tameika McCoy, VCU survivor support advocate, said there is a large emphasis on the first 14 weeks of the fall semester, but the Survivor Support Services provides workshops and prevention interventions throughout the entire school year.
During the Red Zone, McCoy and VCU’s Survivor Support Services hosts awareness events to support students. These events include Safety Day in collaboration with VCU’s law enforcement, and public outreach efforts like tabling.
“We just had a workshop we call ‘Crucial Conversations,’ we just did it with athletics, where we talked about boundaries, consent, relationships and safety,” McCoy said.
McCoy said that she is reaching out to the heads of fraternity and sorority organizations to implement sexual assault prevention strategies. Survivor Support Services contact groups individually to allow for strategies and prevention work for different organizations.
Survivor Support Services helps provide guidance for students battling the aftermath of sexual assault.
McCoy said that Survivor Support Services’ assistance is available for students every step of the way, including providing physical assistance during investigative interviews, paperwork and Physical Evidence Recovery Kits.
“They can meet with us as little or as much as they want,” McCoy said. “I tell students all the time, if you go home, that’s okay, I’ll be here when you get back. We let them know we are completely voluntary, but we are a support for them.”
McCoy posted QR codes around the entrances to the Student Commons that lead students to the Survivor Support Services website to help guide them through the beginning of the sexual assault reporting process.
“If they [students] look at the website and say, ‘you know what, I qualify for this,’ they can give us a call,” McCoy said. “Now they have someone else in their corner.”
The VCU Police Department participates in the Start By Believing program, which occurs in April during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, according to Cierra Elridge, the victim-witness coordinator for VCUPD. Each spring, VCUPD gathers pledges from students stating that they believe victims when they come forward.
VCUPD collaborates with other agencies outside of the VCU area to protect victims of sexual assault outside campus boundaries, according to Elridge. These agencies include Henrico Victim Witness, Project Empower and YWCA Richmond.
“We have partnered with different agencies within the area because a lot of times our survivors, even though they may be a part of the VCU community, their assaults may take place in the city of Richmond, Henrico County, Chesterfield, etcetera. So we want to make sure they have all of the resources available to them,” Elridge said.
As the fall semester continues, VCU is still in the Red Zone and reports of sexual assault continue to be made. Jake Burns, a VCUPD spokesperson, said that there is no definitive statistics to compare sexual assault reports this year to years prior.
In 2024, there were 16 total official reports of rape on VCU Monroe Campus, according to the Safety and Security report. In the 2026 fall semester, Burns said there have been four reported offenses so far.
“The tricky part with the statistics with any kind of sexual offense is that there are so many avenues that a survivor can report to VCU,” Burns said. “There is the police, there is Tameika [McCoy], Title IX and housing. So we can’t really speak to the numbers now because they’re very unofficial.”