Imagine that it is 2:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning and a student has just been raped. Uncertain where to go or what to do, she bikes to the emergency room at Stanford Hospital — Vaden Student Health Center is closed. After admitting herself, she is told that Stanford Hospital, one of the leading research hospitals in the country, does not have the capacity to handle her situation. The student is asked to wait as a police unit arrives. She sits in a police cruiser as they make the 21 mile drive to Valley Medical Center in San Jose to receive a Physical Evidence Recovery Kit (PERK) exam, which will obtain legally correct evidence in case the victim decides to prosecute her attacker.

Another student is raped in rural Walla Walla, Washington. She goes to the small, liberal arts school of Whitman College. She walks to her student health center, which is open 24 hours a day. The nurse on-call personally drives her to St. Mary’s hospital, which is roughly a mile away, to have a PERK exam performed. Up until three years ago, she could even have had the exam done at the student health center.

There have been no cases of sexual assault reported at the Whitman health center in the last three years, yet Whitman continues to maintain a detailed support system for sexual assault survivors.

From May 2005 to April 2006, there were nine cases of sexual assault reported to Stanford’s rape hotline. This statistic is thought to represent 15-20 percent of actual cases of sexual assault at Stanford, according to Leondra Peloquin, the Stanford liaison to the YWCA Silicon Valley Rape Crisis Center. Peloquin works at Vaden, Monday-Thursday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., although appointments can be made during normal business hours.

Stanford has no 24-7 on-call staff at Vaden Health Center to directly handle cases of sexual assault, and recommends on their website that survivors of sexual assault call the rape crisis hotline at (650) 725-9955.

The hotline is run by the YWCA Sexual Assault Center at Stanford. However, Stanford has no rape crisis center of its own. The Sexual Assault Center at Stanford is actually a small arm of the YWCA Silicon Valley Rape Crisis Center, a superb resource located in San Jose.

So here is the problem: If you had just been sexually assaulted, would you think to call the YWCA hotline? Prior to this editorial, did you know that it existed? How much would you want to think about which steps to take after you had been sexually assaulted?

It makes sense that students and members of the Stanford community would intuitively go to a hospital that is world-renowned for its research and that has one of the best medical school programs in the country. What does not make sense is that the elite Stanford Hospital, as well as the university associated with it, does not have the capability to handle something as basic as cases of sexual assault.

It is embarrassing that Stanford does not budget to have PERK exams available on or near campus. It is unbelievable that in an age of fierce competition for top students, Stanford officials have not campaigned to get a PERK program in order to support the health and well-being of Stanford students and staff. There is a Stanford Sexual Violence Advisory Board, which functions “to reduce the occurrence of sexual violence on campus and to provide guidelines to help ensure consistent compliance with the University’s Policy on Sexual Assault and related policies.” However, the activities of the board are not well publicized, and although they have the capacity to shape policy, a PERK program has yet to come to campus.

As suggested by a twenty-five-year practicing physician who received his M.D. and performed his residency at Stanford, if PERK exams were profitable to Stanford Hospital, it is highly likely that they would be performed. To train staff, set-up equipment, and administer PERK exams is a costly enterprise. Processing one individual PERK is roughly $1000.

Because PERK programs are nonexistent on campus, it is even more imperative that students are made aware of the YWCA hotline. The hotline is manned 24-7, and has three phone lines that link to it: there is the Stanford number, which is listed above, as well as (650) 493-7273 or (408) 287-3000. Hotline staff impartially inform callers of their options and answer their questions: There is a 72 hour window to get a PERK exam; victims should not shower or change after they have been assaulted; a victim can call the police and they will pick the victim up and take him or her to Valley Medical Center; cases do not have to be reported as rape in order to get medical care; even if you do not know your attacker, DNA evidence can be used to determine who they are; etc. The YWCA has resources to help survivors through every step of the recovery process, beginning with prevention and ending with counseling and support groups.

Although the YWCA is a quality resource, we must still question why Stanford does not provide more comprehensive services for those who have been sexually assaulted. Could the reason for Stanford’s inadequate medical services for survivors of sexual assault be as simple as financial motivation? The office of Dr. Swaminatha Mahadevan, associate chief emergency department director at Stanford Hospital, did not respond to inquiries regarding the validity of this suggestion.

Regardless of financial costs or a lack of resources, the fact that a student must go 21 miles in order to receive a PERK exam is shameful. If smaller colleges with fewer direct resources can develop comprehensive programs to support survivors of sexual assault, Stanford University can as well. Maybe sexual assault is not seen as a campus issue, but with nine cases of sexual assault reported in a year, it obviously is one. Perhaps the right people were not aware of this embarrassing situation. Hopefully, they are now.