CARBONDALE - A small, bronze plaque declares the east pedestrian overpass on U.S. 51 on the Southern Illinois University Carbondale campus is dedicated to the memory of SIUC student Susan Schumake.

On Monday, daffodils, tulips, cut flowers and balloons marked the spot where Schumake's body was found after her rape and murder on Aug. 17, 1981.

The trial began on March 13 and ended on March 18 with a guilty verdict. The week was SIUC's spring break. Most students weren't on campus to follow the trial that ended a painful mystery concerning a fellow student.

Carbondale resident Juli Claussen was in court for the week-long trial that saw Daniel Woloson, 46, convicted on Friday of the murder. She was an SIUC student in 1981, and remembers the feeling pervasive at the time of uneasiness and fear among women in Carbondale. Schumake's rape and murder was one of several violent acts against women that summer, she said.

Claussen was a volunteer for the Rape Action Committee, a group of volunteers affiliated with the fledgling Women's Center and demanding the naming of the overpass in Susan Schumake's honor. For several consecutive years, the RAC volunteers held a 48-hour encampment in the Free Forum area of campus, holding lectures, passing out literature and doing what they could to raise awareness about crimes against women.

"The students were really supportive," she said. "The administration wasn't too happy with us - at least that's what we heard."

Though the encampment campaigned on Susan Schumake's behalf, the group didn't have much contact with her family, Claussen said.

"Every year we argued whether we should tell her family or not," Claussen said. "We were afraid of opening up old wounds. When I met her friends at the courthouse during the trial, they said if they had known what we were doing they would have been here with us."

Claussen was a member of the "go-out" teams RAC fielded. The group maintained a hotline. Go-out volunteers worked in teams of two, on-call for several days at a time. They helped victims of sexual assault either by being there with them through the hospital visit and the police interviews, or by supporting victims who didn't want to go to the police.

"At that time, things were very different and police didn't have the training they have now," she said. "The police response was really inconsistent. More often than not, the victims were read the riot act about their 'bad behavior.' If they had been drinking they were told, 'Well, what did you think was going to happen?' There was a real need for us at that time."

Cass VanDerMeer, an abuse counselor who was one of The Women's Center's first advocates and a founding member of RAC, was in court, too, to see finished a saga she remembers from the beginning.

The Women's Center didn't begin as a rape crisis center or a shelter, she said. It grew into that as the need became apparent.

"We saw women coming in talking about a kind of rape we'd never heard of," she said, noting that rape was defined at the time as "by force and against her will."

"We started working with the police and community to educate them about this," she said. "We wanted to get the police to realize there was this thing we were just hearing about - it was acquaintance rape."

VanDerMeer said when Carbondale trained two police officers in handling sexual assault cases, that was the beginning of considerable improvement in the way police handle sex crimes.

"It was wonderful (when they added the specially trained police officers)," she said. "Carbondale was ready for the change. It was a time when there was a move toward victims' rights. The more we worked with police and prosecutors, the more we saw how the system was becoming more sensitive."

When the overpass was dedicated to Schumake, Claussen said the RAC group felt they had accomplished something. They stopped the encampments.

Today, many of the students using the overpass are aware that it is dedicated to someone, but few seem to know the story.

Student Lisa Wozniak uses the overpass. She heard about the Daniel Woloson trial, she said, and a friend had told her the origin of the overpass dedication. Joe Batir, a student who regularly uses the overpass, said he knew it was dedicated to the victim of a violent crime, but he didn't know the story behind it.

Jackie Radochonski and Alicia Gallegos said they had noticed the plaque, but haven't really looked at it or wondered about it. They both said they feel reasonably safe on campus, though they avoid night classes.

"I wouldn't feel as comfortable walking this way without the overpass," Gallegos said. "I feel safe on campus, though, mostly, other than at night."

"I would say things have changed a great deal," VanDerMeer said. "But students need to get active and have their voices heard and put up tents and not leave until they get what they want from the administration."

andrea.hahn@thesouthern.com

(618) 529-5454 ext. 15076