Ray Epstein can still remember a chance encounter from her sophomore year in the fall of 2022.
Epstein, who had re-founded Student Activists Against Sexual Assault weeks earlier, was sitting on the steps to Mazur Hall’s terrace when another student, a stranger, spied her, cautiously approached and asked, “Are you Ray?”
“Yes,” Epstein remembers saying. “Who are you?”
The mystery classmate began thanking her profusely and told her everything that SAASA meant to them.
“And then we hugged — and I think it was just, like, the most profound moment of my life,” said Epstein, now a senior English major. “Genuinely.”
SAASA had just held its second meeting in half a decade; the group went dormant in 2017 when its president at the time couldn’t find a successor. But its Epstein-led awakening brought the student organization — and its leader — to national attention.
Temple’s Interfraternity Council tapped SAASA a few months into its second life to help them address a yearslong sexual assault scandal. Epstein’s solution — a mandatory screening of the rape-culture documentary “The Hunting Ground” for all pledges, plus an educational course — proved a hit, and the university’s sororities eventually lifted an embargo on joint social gatherings.
Last September, SAASA secured $200,000 in free rideshares in partnership with Uber. The trips vanished so quickly that Uber offered another $150,000 worth of vouchers on Halloweekend. The state of Pennsylvania took notice, too, awarding SAASA a $20,000 grant this spring in partnership with It’s On Us, a SAASA-aligned national organization that also bills itself as advocating and supporting survivors.
Epstein maintains she was simply a player on a wide and dedicated team. Survivors had more hospitable avenues to share their stories, she said, than what existed in the landscape of the organization’s first run.
But her profile grew anyway as SAASA became the crown jewel of Temple’s student organizations: Epstein received the prestigious Truman Scholarship in the spring, the first Truman award for a Temple student since Kylie Patterson in 2009. Almost simultaneously, her fellow students elected their leader of activists to be their activist leader, elevating her to the position of Temple Student Government president.
But Epstein’s most dearly-held role, alongside SAASA’s other leaders, is one she’s never altered or relinquished: An anytime ally and close confidante to survivors in the immediate aftermath of sexual violence.
“My initial intention was just, ‘I need this place to exist because I know everyone else who experiences this feels exactly the same way,’” Epstein said. “They just want to feel seen, and they want to feel like they’re not alone.”
Next May, Epstein, wearer of many hats, will don her last as a student: The tasseled, rectangular cap that crowns college graduates. Longtime SAASA vice president Valerie Torres finishes her time at Temple in the spring, too — sending the organization on a mission to avert another extended hiatus.
Epstein and Torres invited younger SAASA operatives to intra-institutional meetings, so they could become familiar to those with whom the organization works. And while the organization’s decision-makers — who affectionately call one another “The Core Four” — haven’t yet named a formal successor to the top role, they did appoint a co-vice president, junior criminal justice major Bella Kwok.
“I think Ray envisioned the vice president being someone able to take over,” Kwok, who led a victim-advocacy group of her own in high school. “Since she and Val are the same grade, I think they wanted someone a little younger than them.”
Epstein says she intends to hold both SAASA and TSG’s presidential roles for the time being. Among her first projects is a collaboration with Temple’s chapter of PERIOD to replace the menstrual product bins they’ve previously installed in on-campus restrooms with mechanical dispensers.
Installing new devices in Temple’s facilities requires a series of administrative approvals, said PERIOD president Allanah Nelligan, who also serves in TSG as director of student affairs. Not even those green lights guarantee the club’s initiatives can go forward without hiccups or misunderstandings — which, Nelligan said, made it more meaningful to have a friend in TSG.
“Ray has worked with us in the past,” Nelligan, a senior secondary education major, said. “She knows what we’re trying to achieve on campus. She supports us fully.”
Kwok, too, credited Epstein’s knowledge — both of Temple’s institutions and its stakeholders — with SAASA’s second-act triumph, saying few could have rebuilt the organization as effectively. But the progress of those first two years, she added, still left more work to be done — for whoever leads Temple’s student activists into the future.
“I think there’s absolutely space for SAASA to expand our reach even more,” Kwok said.
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