In an email forwarded to many listservs yesterday, Undergraduate Assembly Chairman Jason Karsh demystified some of the rumors surrounding the two sexual assault incidents that occurred between 5 a.m. and 10:30 p.m. Monday.
No thanks to the ambiguous DPS email that went out last night, we now have the facts.
4000 Block of Spruce Incident:
-Yesterday morning at about 5AM a female student was sexually assaulted in her apartment
-the victim was not physically injured
-this was reported in the DP and was the 3rd incident of stranger rape that has occurred at Penn since 1994
-they are highly unusual but naturally have a deep impact on the psyche of those within our communitySecurity Guard Incident:
-A Penn student was offered to be escorted by an Allied Barton security officer, which is normal procedure if an escort sees someone walking home alone and is not currently on a call.
-The Allied Barton security officer, who has worked at Penn for nine months with no prior criminal background, exposed himself.
-He was quickly identified after the incident was reported and was taken into custody.
-He is no longer employed by Allied Barton. - NO UNIFORMS HAVE BEEN STOLEN. Any reports of stolen uniforms are false.
Of course, both incidents are horrible, and my thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of such random, disgusting crime.
What perturbs me the most is that the protocol for informing the campus of these events encourages student gossip and rumor to take over, flooding out the potential real dangers that we may or may not be facing.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I got the Safety Alert email, and then a subsequent email claiming it was about the security guard incident, I was incredulous. Why would DPS send such a threatening email about such a (relatively) minor incident?
The University wants to notify us as soon as possible about a potential security threat, but doing so without sufficient disclosure prevents students from modifying their behavior appropriately. If I lived at 40th and Spruce, I’d want to know if there was a rapist on the loose, wouldn’t you?
Here’s what the email says is being done currently:
-All security guards/escorts will have photo IDs on them that they will be wearing visibly around their neck or on their jackets.
-All security guards/escorts will have courtesy cards to give to you, stating their name, and what to do to give feedback. (Additionally, you can cross-reference their courtesy card to their ID.)
-All security guards/escorts will introduce themselves, present their ID, and provide you with a courtesy card.
These changes are necessary, but the root of the problem is not being addressed. This incident underlines the fact that Penn does not do enough to control the hiring of its third-party employees. First it’s criminals at ABP, now it’s sex offenders in Allied-Barton — the people who are supposed to be protecting us. And don’t even get me started on Aramark. I watched a girl get screamed at the other day for touching the serving tongs in Commons.
Some might say that stranger-rape (and maybe even penis-revealing) is the type of random crime that the University can’t be charged with failing to prevent. I say, if we can’t even trust the “guards” who walk us home to not sexually assault us, DPS had better come up with a solution, and quick. Because after these two incidents, I’m not quite sure whether more or less people will use 898-WALK.
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