About
Mission
The Phoenix Center at Auraria’s mission is to provide education and comprehensive victim service to ensure survivors may access their particular healing journey, work to mitigate the impact of interpersonal violence on their pursuit of goals, and create a trauma-informed and prevention focused campus environment.
Services
The PCA is a confidential and free service.The PCA serves students, faculty, and staff of all three institutions, who have experienced or know someone experiencing any form of interpersonal violence (e.g. relationship violence, sexual violence, family violence, stalking, harassment, human trafficking, etc.)
As an advocacy service our focus and priority are always on survivors and survivor needs. This can look like exploring options/assisting with academic support, basic needs (i.e. housing, food, etc.), emotional support, mental health needs, legal concerns, criminal/title ix reporting, court accompaniment, and various referrals among other things. While these are some examples of what we do, we only discuss what a client is interested in. As an agency, our priority is giving our clients information, autonomy, and choice.
The PCA also provides campus education and training, awareness raising events, and campus policy guidance.
History
The Phoenix Center at Auraria was founded in 2009 after MSU Denver student, Abigail “Abby” Robertson, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, another student on Auraria campus, Marcus Hightower.
After Abigail ended their relationship, Marcus began stalking and harassing her. Abigail filed for a protection order against Marcus and the judge granted the protection order.
On December 11th, 2007, Marcus came to Abigail’s home, shot and stabbed her multiple times, and immediately turned himself into law enforcement.
This event triggered campus-wide conversations about how folks on Auraria Campus could have potentially been a resource to prevent Abigial’s death - and future students deaths. These conversations resulted in birth of The Phoenix Center at Auraria.