Do us a favor, readers, and check your phone for the last ASU alerts and advisories you received.
Something about a chlorine leak at the Engineering Research Center, and a note informing that class was in session despite apocalyptic rain, right?
If you think these were the most important happenings on campus to be made aware of in the past few weeks, you’ve been let down.
According to an ASU Police Crime Alert, a young female student on Tempe campus was knocked unconscious and sexually assaulted near Adelphi Commons II Tuesday. The identity of the suspect is unknown beyond a basic physical description.
After feeling seriously disturbed by the gravity of the crime, you probably cocked your head and thought, “What are ASU Crime Alerts?” Therein lies a serious problem: Few students are familiar with ASU Crime Alerts. Even fewer spend their nights perusing the ASU Police Department’s Crime Alert website, which seems to be the only way to keep updated on it.
Although the Crime Alert contained important information like a description of the suspect, a recommendation of the buddy system, a phone number for the Safety Escort Program, and a mention of the Livesafe app, nobody seemed to be aware that the alert even existed. After all, a PDF found in an obscure part of asu.edu is not exactly liable to reach a mass of 70,000 students.
Most ASU students rely on ASU Alert, which “communicates primarily life-threatening situations to the ASU community” through text, email, Facebook, and Twitter. All of these are reliable ways of communicating dangers to students. Why the aforementioned crime was not relayed through this stable means of communication is beyond us. Neither ASU Alert nor ASU Police posted anything about the crime on their Twitter accounts.
Basically, no reliable message was sent to the students that a violent, horrific crime was under investigation. If we can be inundated with warnings of gas leaks and bee swarms, shouldn't we be informed of the presence of a dangerous perpetrator of violence? If so, then don’t we deserve a medium that is actually accessible for students?
We understand that the University is moving in the right direction towards enforcing a safer environment. The creation of a task force devoted to organizing a plan of action for sexual violence prevention is a necessary step forward. Per AZCentral’s article on the crime, “There have been six sexual assaults so far this year compared to nine in the same period last year. The agency (Tempe Police Department) has reported seven sex crimes overall in 2014, compared to 13 during the same period in 2013.” ASU seems to be making progress towards getting that number to zero.
However, the lack of communication between students, administration, and ASU Police on this crime reveals an alarming disconnect.
We can speculate that University officials don’t want students to feel barraged with messages that can make some feel like their campus is a treacherous place rife with sexual assault around every corner. Perhaps it would be distressing for students trying to enjoy a night out with friends to receive an alert of something as disturbing as sexual assault.
But we need to know. We shouldn't have to learn about it four days after the incident from AZCentral. This was a very dangerous unresolved situation, and every Tempe student deserved to be aware of it. Simple as that.
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