Lana Whited

I have seldom heard the undergraduate students on our campus quieter than when Janine Latus was speaking to them. At the end of my class, students filed out, shaking her hand and offering their thanks. Over the course of the three days she spent on our campus, she spoke in five classes, at a campus-wide program, and with clients at our local women’s shelter. On campus, I frequently saw students talking with her privately, sometimes with tears in their eyes. Janine helps victims of abuse understand that they neither deserved nor provoked it, and she encourages them on their own healing journeys. She is generous with her time and talents and unwavering in her crusade to spare others what she and her sister Amy endured. Her message resonates long after she has gone.

Lana A. WhitedProfessor of English, Director of the Boone Honors Program, and campus advisor to Help Save the Next GirlFerrum College