Women lend their voices to McCluskey

Five years ago, Lauren McCluskey was allegedly murdered on the University of Utah campus by her ex-boyfriend. It would spark outrage at the university’s handling of the case and point out flaws in campus safety plans around the United States.

On Tuesday night, Jill McCluskey, Lauren’s mother and founder of the Lauren McCluskey Foundation, sat on a panel of four women to discuss how her daughter’s story spread awareness of interpersonal violence and changed laws.

“Everyone has the power to listen, to believe and to respond to a person who is asking for help,” moderator Molly Schotzko of Washington State University said.

The panel was part of a two-day event called “Power of Voice,” which took place Monday and Tuesday evenings at Goertzen Hall on the WSU campus. The first event was a showing of the ESPN film, “Listen,” documenting the story of Lauren McCluskey, a former Pullman High School track and field star who went on to compete for the University of Utah. The film is available for free on YouTube at bit.ly/40FTEtN.

Jill McCluskey was joined on the panel by Nicole Noren, an ESPN journalist and the film’s director; Jani Iwamoto, a lawyer and former Utah state senator; and Devon Cantrell-Chavez, a graduate student at the University of Ottawa and former University of Utah student.

“Each of these women helped the cause,” Jill McCluskey said. “Each helped tell the story.”

Cantrell-Chavez said she had just started graduate school at the University of Utah when Lauren McCluskey died.

“I saw a lot of friends and people go through this,” Cantrell-Chavez said. “There were a lot of people grappling with what interpersonal violence is.”

The response from the university and the misinformation that spread in the early reporting angered her and many students, she said. She and other students came together to form “UnsafeU,” an advocacy group.

She also discussed the impact Lauren McCluskey’s case had on institutions and the students’ response to them. Cantrell-Chavez said the student response could be described as demands for transparency and accountability, and the lessons learned led to institutional and cultural changes.

Cantrell-Chavez said one way to track change in institutions is to look past what they say and note where they’re putting their money.

“One of the things I tell you is that an organization can help, you know, say what their values are, but a budget will actually tell you what their values are,” Cantrell-Chavez said. “So if you’re looking for change and progress in institutions, one of the first things I would say is actually don’t listen to what they’re telling you what they’re doing — look to see where are they spending financial resources, where are they spending time resources?”

She recalled how the University of Utah lacked transparency in its actions and how it broke students’ and families’ trust in handling cases like McCluskey’s. Cantrell-Chavez said she thought the cultural side was harder to gauge but was important to ending interpersonal violence.

Iwamoto said McCluskey’s death happened soon after she’d had a discussion with her son about sexual assault and dating violence. It pushed her to bring bills before the Utah state Congress about campus safety.

“What happened to Lauren should have never happened,” Iwamoto said, “but it became a part of every legislative bill since then that I did, whether it be domestic violence, police reform — whatever I learned from Lauren’s life and what she went through has been a part of everything I did going forward.”

Kali Nelson can be reached at knelson@dnew.com.