About the Office of Victim Assistance

The office of Victim Assistance provides information and support about many difficult topics. Click below to browse all topics Browse Topics: Select Topic Assault Bias Death Discrimination and Harassment Intimate Partner Violence Serious Accidents Sexual Assault Stalking Other - Confidential Reporting - Reporting - Prevalence - How to Assist the Emotionally Distressed Student or View All Questions

The Office of Victim Assistance (OVA) offers free confidential information, support and short term counseling to students, faculty and staff at CU and their significant others. OVA is not a part of the police department. Our office primarily handles situations involving physical assault and hazing, bias motivated incidents, death, discrimination and harassment including sexual harassment, intimate partner violence, serious accidents, sexual assault and stalking. We help people learn about and assess their options in
these situations.

We are able to support and consult with people as they make their way through systems, and we refer to and collaborate with campus and community resources who also work with these issues. We talk with people who want to help friends or significant others who are experiencing these situations.
We collaborate with other offices on campus as well.

We can talk about academic or work questions, medical questions, reporting
questions, counseling and informational questions.

To send a general question to our office: assist@colorado.edu

About our name: Not everyone who comes to our office needs to be or think of themselves as a "victim." That word is helpful for some people at some times and unhelpful for other people in other instances, and it certainly can carry a stigma. Some people would prefer to consider themselves "survivors."

One definition of "victim" is: "An individual who has suffered loss, injury, pain or death as a result of abuse or violence committed by another individual."

One definition of "abuse" is: "The intentional physical, emotional or sexual invasion of another’s boundaries; mistreatment or misuse of another person."

Our mission is to mitigate the long term negative impact of traumatic events. We view these events in the context of long standing patterns of violence and unequal access to resources based on gender, race, class,sexual orientation, gender expression and ability.