President Crow answered student questions in his address, Oct. 3. He was prompted to talk about ASU's future where he shares about new improvements and growth in graduates. (Photo by Tynin Fries)ASU President Michael Crow addressed student's concerns and answered questions during a University town hall this afternoon at ASU's downtown campus.
Questions from students varied, but the overall issue students wanted addressed involved on campus safety and sexual safety.
The issue of sexual safety was brought up by Nick Wicksman, chief of staff for Undergraduate Student Government Downtown, and Crow addressed how the University is looking to respond situations that may arise.
"An all-University task force is being put together to reshape our policies and come up with better tools and better mechanisms as well as hold people accountable, and hope that the law will catch up with what we are doing as a university," Crow said.
Crow said what students need is education on sexual assault and how to stay safe.
"How about if people took responsibility for others," he said. "If they help protect other people who they see may be being taken advantage of. We are trying to get everyone educated and everyone involved to cut down on these situations."
When the University becomes aware of these incidents there is a student judicial justice process involved, Crow said.
"Students have been and are expelled from the institution and suspended from the institution for their behaviors and that is not uncommon," he said. "It is also the case that we hold everyone accountable for their actions and we want to greatly reduce these incidents of very traumatic events."
Informing students on who to contact and how to address sexual safety issues was brought up by Masai Hunter a freshman communications major who was concerned about sexual safety.
Hunter said she wanted to know how the University is informing students on who to contact if a sexual safety issue arises.
Crow gave Hunter a list of different contacts who would be best for students who have safety issues to contact in order to receive immediate responses.
"There is anyone in the ASU counseling services, the police, and faculty members, the dean and a person you can always call is Jennifer Hightower who is the dean of students on the downtown campus," Crow said. "The dean of students is the perfect person to contact because they have access to all of the other services, and they can speak to the police for you, they can speak to your professors for you and whatever you need they can work with."
Further information regarding safety concerns and who to contact will be sent out through a mass email, Crow said.
After the meeting Hunter said she really liked what she heard from Crow.
"I feel that if this conversation keeps coming up and people's minds keep getting sparked with being interested in this I feel that there will be action taken," Hunter said. "It's going to take a lot of collaboration and critical thinking into coming up with solutions for this since it isn't an easy topic to solve right away."
After the town hall, Crow said safety concerns are being looked into as quickly as possible.
"Everything is happening in real time and we are already implementing different ideas to address these problems," he said.
USGD President Frank Smith III said he agreed with Crow's statements from the town hall.
"Dr. Crow showed that the University isn't about who you exclude, but who you include," Smith said.
Along with the University efforts to combat sexual assault on all campuses, Smith said an initiative has been started to connect all Pac-12 schools together to fight sexual assault.
"The Pac-12 initiative has just started and UA is now on board and we will start to reach out soon to other universities," Smith said.
Reach the reporter at jshanco2@asu.edu or follow on Twitter @joey_hancock
Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
