Parents of slain college student have turned grief into nationwide fight for campus safety
In the two weeks leading up to her murder on Oct. 22, 2018, University of Utah student-athlete Lauren McCluskey reported her attacker to campus police more than 20 times.
Her mother said she continued to report him over and over, despite a lack of response from people in positions of power. One thing Lauren’s mother said she wants people to know about her daughter is that Lauren never gave up.
“She was brave,” Jill McCluskey said. “She advocated for herself when no one else would.”
In the five years since their daughter was murdered, Matt and Jill McCluskey, have become advocates for campus safety. They are working to create social change through the Lauren McCluskey Foundation, which they established in Lauren’s honor with the $13.5 million settlement the McCluskeys received from a lawsuit against the University of Utah. McCluskey said the foundation will release a campus safety scorecard in the next 12 months to hold universities accountable to best safety practices.
“There is a ton of grief after you lose a child and part of my response to that grief was to try to make things better, and that was really a motivation,” McCluskey said. “I think if you're doing something positive, and for other people, I think it really helps you feel better and feel more hopeful about the future.”
The McCluskeys have focused their efforts on changing the culture surrounding campus safety. Among their priorities is the campus safety scorecard. McCluskey said the scorecard will go beyond the Clery Act, which requires colleges and universities to report campus crime data, support victims of violence, and publicly outline the policies and procedures they have put in place to improve campus safety.
A campus safety scorecard for families
“We want to make sure that the universities are adopting best practices and doing the right things,” McCluskey said. “This is so important to us because our daughter was murdered in 2018 and there were so many errors, and not best practices adopted that could have saved her life.”
The McCluskeys are working with experts, including researchers from Washington State University and Stanford University, to develop the scorecard. Edwin Gianini, a 2023 WSU School of Economic Sciences undergraduate, helped uncover base data on students’ feelings about campus safety at Washington State.
“Pretty much unanimously, females felt less safe in every factor across the board compared to males,” said Gianini, now a Lauren McCluskey Foundation volunteer.
For example, a question about whether students felt safe on the WSU campus on a 1-to-10 scale had an average response of 6.96 for females, with an average response from all other genders of 8.14.
In addition to crime data, researchers will collect information on whether campuses have victims’ advocates on staff and the size of the campus police department.
“We'll have all these different things that are weighted and then we'd come up with a score and that would be publicized, just like other ratings of universities are publicized,” McCluskey said.
This safety rating is to create incentives for universities to adopt student safety best practices and to identify potentially necessary safety reforms, McCluskey said. Additionally, McCluskey said they would like to see the campus safety scorecard included in U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings.
When the McCluskeys were looking at colleges for Lauren in 2015, safety was a factor in their decision, but they were less knowledgeable about campus safety issues, McCluskey said. Lauren had been a standout track athlete at Pullman High School in Pullman, Washington, and received a scholarship from the University of Utah to pursue her athletic dreams. McCluskey said they were aware of Salt Lake City’s reputation as a safe city and talked to parents of women on the University of Utah track team whose daughters chose the school based on that reputation.
Lauren ranks 11th all time in the pentathlon at Utah and earned Pac-12 All-Academic honorable mention and Mountain Pacific Sports Federation All-Academic honors her sophomore year.
During her senior year, Lauren began dating a man who lied to her about his age and identity. The two had been dating for about a month when Lauren, 21, learned he had not only lied about his name and age but also had hidden his criminal history.
After she confronted him, Melvin Rowland began stalking Lauren, peering into her windows, following her and her roommates around campus, and he brought a gun to campus. Lauren, her friends, and her mother reported these incidents to the Salt Lake City and University of Utah police and campus officials more than 20 times.
Late on Oct. 22, after Lauren’s night class, 37-year-old Rowland abducted her as she walked to her car while talking to her mom on the phone. He took her to a car he had parked nearby, where he shot and killed her. Rowland shot himself later that night.
Adopting Lauren's Promise
Over the last five years, the McCluskeys have worked to boost campus safety by promoting collaboration among higher education officials and law enforcement partners.
Heather Sturzenegger, University of Utah Police Department major and executive officer of the department’s Chief Safety Office, worked for the University of Utah from 2008 to 2018. She said she left the department in September 2018, one month before Lauren’s murder, after experiencing discrimination by the administration.
“It just wasn't conducive to what I wanted to do in my career because I had a lot of training in sexual assault. I had a lot of training in (Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield) and there were a lot of things that I was trying to change or bring to the admin that was just ignored,” Sturzenegger said.
Sturzenegger said she rejoined the department after Lauren’s murder, when new leadership took the helm and a majority of department personnel were replaced. Department leadership created a victim advocacy program in its investigation unit to support victims of crime by providing resources and support, Sturzenegger said. Campus police now must make contact with a victim of crime within 48 hours of receiving a case. Additionally, when an officer responds to interpersonal violence, sexual assault, or violence on campus, the officer must immediately report it up the chain of command, which includes Sturzenegger and, ultimately, the department chief, Sturzenegger said.
“I want our entire department to make sure that we're always being victim-centered and trauma-informed in everything that we're doing with a victim of crime,” Sturzenegger said. “I do feel like we've made big strides and our victim’s advocates just are amazing, I don't know why we didn't have them before.”
Lauren’s murder shocked the nation and forced law enforcement, universities and individuals to reevaluate campus safety issues. Jill McCluskey has spoken at campus safety conferences at the University of Utah and the University of California at Merced this year and is committed to improving collaboration among campus agencies and community partners. The McCluskeys are committed to supporting others who have been inspired by Lauren’s death to promote safety.
Mesa Weidle, a former University of Utah track athlete and Lauren’s friend, had been with Lauren three hours before her murder. After her initial feeling of denial faded, Weidle went into a traumatic episode of paranoia and feared for her and her teammates’ lives, she said.
In April 2019, Weidle attended an educational seminar hosted by the nonprofit, Surviving Assault Standing Strong, which provides self-defense training, violence prevention education and survivor support.
“I just remember leaving and feeling so empowered and kind of feeling like I could reclaim my safety back,” Weidle said. “I was dealing with a lot of grief and I felt like I should have done more as a teammate and friend for Lauren and I remember leaving just feeling like I could have my head held up and my shoulders and chest up, and I left so empowered from that.”
Weidle reached out to the organization and is now a full-time instructor. She taught her first self-defense class in October 2019 in Pullman at the first Lauren McCluskey Race for Campus Safety.
“I was able to teach a self-defense class there in her name and it was very healing for me to be able to kind of honor her in that way and it kind of came full circle,” Weidle said. “I've been back every year to teach a class and I've taught a little over 250 women and girls.”
Weidle is among the many individuals who have been inspired to work with the McCluskeys and their foundation to honor Lauren’s legacy. The Lauren McCluskey Foundation works with over 5,000 colleges and universities to honor Lauren and change the culture of campus safety via research, resources and awareness.
McCluskey said that as she began to uncover details about Lauren’s death and the events leading up to her murder, she thought to herself, “’If I were a professor, what could I have done if another student were in this situation?’”
That thought triggered the start of Lauren’s Promise: “I will listen and believe you if someone is threatening you.” Faculty at more than 280 universities around the world have adopted Lauren’s Promise and it is part of the standardized university syllabus at Washington State University.
The McCluskeys anticipate that the foundation will make significant progress in the next 12 months toward making college campuses safer through its various programs. In particular, McCluskey said they plan to complete the campus safety scorecard. She said they won’t stop working until the scorecard is complete because they expect it to have a big impact.
“I expect there not to be the situation that Lauren was in, so other parents won’t lose their daughter while they’re at college,” McCluskey said. “This is important for us, that we can help make a difference, that hopefully the next young woman who asks for help will have a better response. You have to be brave to ask for help and so we also want to change the culture that responds to young women.”