THE CAMERON COLLEGIAN, NOV. 15, 1989
eel
The toll: 31 who died
Most colleges fail to report violent crimes
Student raped at Las Cruces man
launts Trojan Hall; plans arrested in campus rape
1 town not to prosecute
By JENNY STRASBURG
pound Up Repcrtc*
swdcm worn io ibc Music Build
, u\ 0 m Fnday to pratu
at around P 1,1
ha musical msirumcni.
Denise Kalerte
1 today
Bv Roger I etft
Assistant C.tv Pditor
pended, however after the
district attorney s office ri
.^r.nld Las Cruces man
m._1 ■ _ n ^
The victim
said she spoVc wit
; uoon enter
bv Professor Mary Koss of the l' of
Arizona School ot Medicine in 1988,
indicated that approximately one in
four college women will he the victim of
rape or attempted rape in a six-month
period.
In another Koss survey, 15.6 percent
of college women surveyed said they
had been the victim of rape since age
1 1, and 12.1 percent said they had been
the victim of an attempted rape.
Other studies indicates that only
about 10 percent of all rape victims
report the assaults to law enforcement
authorities
"The problem is that victims are
denied basic rights and protections
when they do report. Abarbanel says
•‘We’ve heard a lot of horror stories
where the rights of the victim were
treated as secondary to the rights of t he
accused."
Cindv, a graduate of UCLA who
asked that her real name be withheld,
was the victim ot an aquaintance rape
in a university dormitory in 1986 The
insensitivity of university udministra
tors following the incident, she says,
resulted m further emotional strain
The incident occurred when Cindy,
along with other dormitory students,
moved back into the dorms the
Thursday before second quarter class
es started. Only a small fraction ot the
students on her floor were back.
Following a beer drinking game,
Cindy was escorted back to her room by
a male she had befriended the previous
quarter.
She passed out with the man in her
room, and then woke up to find him
turning her over to face him.
He already had part of my clothes
off. He had both of mv wrists, and 1 was
pinned I’d say 'No’ and he (i say W hy
over and over Finally I said T don’t
have a choice, do 1. and he said No 1
froze, and he raped me ”
The bureacrnctic sluggishness that
followed, she says, increased her trau
ma and prevented justice from being
served.
Despite Cindy's several requests, her
assailant was not transferred toanoth
er dorm
Jean Clery
Killed lit Lehigh l', 19Ht)
One day she was told he would be
moving, and to stay away from the
dorm for the day She returned to find
him still there.
After going through approximately
40 hours of interviews with the' univer
sity's legal counsel, she and the
assailant were brought together with
the university's ombudsman, whom
she says “was untrained about rape.’
Following the discussion, the ombuds
man had the two shake hands "The
biggest problem for me was a lack of
system People didn't understand what
to do," Cindy says
Don Hartsock, the university’s
ombudsman, refused to comment or
discuss the procedures by which such a
Michael Smith, criminal justice
professor at Southern Mississippi U
suggests several ways colleges
can improve campus safety:
✓ Increase lighting
✓ Issue elevator, lobby and room keys
✓ Create security checkpoints in dorms
✓ Change locks when residents lose keys
✓ Publicize crime reports
✓ Implement escort services
GRAPHIC fl> U THE RATIONAL COLLEGE REWSPAPIR
cast' would he handled All ombudsman
services are completely confident ial, he
said.
Later, i’indy was called before a
university panel developing a rape
protocol. She says the policy the panel
ultimately developed incorporated
her views about what the university
should have done "1’hey rewrote my
agenda for what should have hap
pened and basically turned it into uni
versity policy."
Today, UCLA is praised by experts
such as Abarbanel for its comprehen
sive rape protocol
Hut the experts also emphasize that
at main institutions, both a policy and
a sense of how to aid victims are sorely
lacking
"Awareness is growing, but it's not
where I'd like it to be,' Koss says “We
need more awareness at the higher lev
els of administration, where the money
is Otherwise, programs won't be put
into effect."
large knife and threatened pea
pie 10 to 15 minutes before stabbing
Northeastern l' student Ignacio St
Ruse Campus security was informed,
and they had the power of arrest and
dul not use it
describing the incident that resulted
in the death of Ignacio St Rose at a
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology party in February 1987
Today, a suit is pending in
Massachusetts court against MIL
charging that the murder of St Rose,
an 18 year-old from New York City, was
preventable and th.it the university
failed to ensure his safety. It's one of a
number of suits being filed against
institutions by violent crime victims
and their parents.
"People are now realizing one of their
rights is to take the school to court,"
attorney Newman says. “It should be
said up front that not all crimes on cam
pus are preventable. Hut if you could
have gotten information or you could
have fixed the locks or made sure peo
ple are checking IDs and you didn’t,
that’s what allows crime to happen
That’s where liability comes in."
According to David Stormer. assis
tant vice president of Safety and
Environmental Health at the U of
Pennsylvania and 1st vice president of
the International Association of Law
Enforcement Administrators
IACLEA that lawsuits are being filed
and won is having some impact on uni
versity acceptance of their rosponsibil
ity to protect Before the 1960s,
Stormer notes, universities almost
invariably used in loco parentis poli
cies. which saw the university as a sur
Attornev -Jeffrey Newman,
rognte parental guardian, and kept a
tight rein on campus activities 1'hr
various movements of the '60s helped
open up campuses considerably and
gave students more freedom
"Since then, with that great freedom
came some of the court actions and civil
litigation which gave rise to the con
ceptsofwhat is in the contract between
the student and the institution.
Stormer says. "It's been established
that the university has some obligation
to protect the st udent and third parties
on campus."
How far this obligation goes has not
yet been firmly established However,
campus crime victims have demon
strated that they can win suits that
charge universities with failing to pro
tect them Newman says he knows of
approximately 15 campus crime suits
settled last year
The lack of student awareness of
campus crime is being addressed by
legislators on the state and federal
levels
In fall 198‘j, a lull was introduced m
Congress known as the Crime
Awareness and Campus Security Act
CS Hep Bill doodling (R-Pa), the
sponsor, formulated the measure after
being approached by Howard and
('onstance dlery
The bill attempts to obtain crime
information from the 90 percent of col
leges and universities nationwide that
provide no information to the FBI’s uni
form crime report.
Because so few institutions report,
the true level of violent crime remains
a mystery. Some experts like Michael
Smith, a criminal justice professor at
the V of Southern Mississippi, argue
that crime is rampant. Some campus
law enforcement officials, however, say
campuses are often far safer than the
surrounding neighborhoods
Others say that while the absence of
statistics makes an accurate assess
ment impossible, it is precisely this
lack of information which makes stu
dents open to threats, doodling and
others note that unless an accurate
assessment of campus crime is provid
ed, many students will continue to view
campuses as sanctuaries from crime.
"()ur concern is let’s be careful about
generalizing that crime is out of hand
We don’t know that because only 10
percent of institutions are reporting,"
says -Jim Caswell, vice president foi
st udent affairs at Southern Methodist
University, and chair of a task force on
safety of the National Association of
Student Personnel Administrators
f NASPA i.
(ioodling's legislation would require
colleges and universities to provide
students and employees with an
annual report on crime statistics and
university security measures This