A flier for KU's new Sexual Assault Prevention and Education Center, or SAPEC.

Kansas University’s new Sexual Assault Prevention and Education Center, or SAPEC, has reached its 30-day mark on campus. Center director Jennifer Brockman visited the KU Student Senate meeting this week to introduce herself, and it sounds like she’s been busy so far — even though she’s flying solo until additional SAPEC staffers are hired.

For now the office is located in 116 Carruth O’Leary Hall, the same building as KU’s Office of Institutional Opportunity and Access. The Student Senate has asked that SAPEC eventually be located inside the new Burge union (and they have a strong say in that because the building is being funded by student fees) once it’s constructed in KU’s Central District.

“This is a center that is the result of student activism,” she said, so everything they do should be student-focused.

This week the center launched the search for its next employee, an educator slated to focus on men’s advocacy and involvement in prevention, Brockman said. The search for the second educator, focused on consent, should start later this spring. By next fall, the hope is to have peer educators — students who have received certification and training — in action.

In the meantime, Brockman said she’s been meeting with others around campus. She said SAPEC’s first “Prevention Collective Meeting,” a get-together for all groups with a hand in sexual assault investigations and prevention, is planned for March 11.

“The real goal of SAPEC is to operate as that lynchpin agency,” Brockman said.

• Newspaper funding decision pushed back: Also on Wednesday, the Student Senate considered required student fees for the 2016-2017 school year — and sent the proposal back to committee. One of dozens of student fees recommended in the bill was an increase that would reinstate University Daily Kansan funding to what it was two years ago, before a fee cut reportedly forced the paper to cut staff and prompted a free-speech lawsuit.

The fee issue should return to the full Senate for a vote on March 9. It doesn’t sound like the Kansan fee was the biggest hangup, however. The Kansan reported that fees, as proposed, increased 60 cents overall, and a number of senators said the Senate should work to whittle them down instead.

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• I’m the Journal-World’s KU and higher ed reporter. See all the newspaper’s KU coverage here. Reach me by email at sshepherd@ljworld.com, by phone at 832-7187, on Twitter @saramarieshep or via Facebook at Facebook.com/SaraShepherdNews.