"Sexual assault is a crime, Occidental has a system for alerting people to reports of crime, when a person reports the crime of sexual assault, that report should be included in this system. To do otherwise is to allow college policy to be driven by the belief that women are uniquely untrustworthy and prone to malicious lies. That is bias against women, plain and simple."

TIL men are never the victims of sexual assault. Thanks Lisa!

Can anyone launch a equal opportunity legal effort to link compliance with Title IX with a college or university's sexual assault/rape policies like this and others so women have as an equal access to safety as they are to have with educational and extra-curricular programs? You all at Occidental have a great legal test case here for Federal courts. 

I don't think I understand your point. Are you suggesting that somehow women don't have equal access to safety on the Occidental campus? What would "equal access to safety" mean?

Sorry, that was meant as a response to LynneShapiro2.

Wow, what a terrible move by the president. This tactic is going to generate more bad PR for them, not less.

A) This article confirms your belief that sexual assault only happens to women. This is not the case; furthermore, the explicit exclusion of male victims of sexual assault--especially in your pronoun use--is DEPLORABLE.  B) The official response to the 12 demands does not promise immediate OxyAlert emails. C) Your writings suggest that an immediate, campus-wide email as a result of a student seeking to report a sexual assault will assuage the anxiety of doing so. D) You do not address the concept of 'imminent or continuing danger' which is the backbone of the OxyAlert system. 

I would expect better from an Occidental professor than this article which is rife with half-truths, non-inclusion, and misrepresentation of events. 

Our young people need to be protected.  Jonathan Veitch needs to inform the Oxy community of any incidence of this type. The students need to know that a crime is under investigation. The collage shoud not have to take sides or give names. Oxy has an obligation to inform but not to judge. Jonathan Veitch is wrong the students are right.

Forget about OxyAlert, it's only good for reporting rape after it is too late to do anything about it.  Demand concealed carry so you stop a rape from occuring in the first place.

I can see why some would object to the unequal reportage that this system uses.  That said I've got to say that in my collegiate days I found these crime alert systems to be little more than a great big nuisance regardless of what kinds of crimes they were reporting.  I've never really heard these systems saving anyone from anything by broadcasting reports of isolated crimes, all they really seem to do is create an environment of largely needless paranoia.

I always find it interesting that when discussing a topic in which 96% of the victims are women, people still feel compelled to yell "but what about the menz!" No one is saying that men aren't victims of sexual assault, but by making that your argument what you are saying is that the annual assault of roughly 8,657 men is equivalently problematical to the assault of 199,097 women.

Obviously victims who are men deserve exactly the same respect and right for justice that victims who are women should receive. The fact of the matter is that neither receives much respect or justice because rape is largely seen as a 'women's issue', and our society teaches us not to get raped instead of not to rape people.

Dr. Wade, I take particular issue with OSAC's insistence in using OxyAlert to report case of rape and sexual assault. OxyAlert is inherently a defensive system. It is a gunman on the loose, take shelter there's a fire, system. It is there to tell students to take a defensive posture; that they need to be more acutely responsible for their safety. In using OxyAlert to inform of a case of rape or sexual assault you are broadcasting the message that students need to be more responsible for not getting raped. That's problematic and inherently victim blame-y. I agree that the student body should be informed of the time and place of rapes and sexual assaults and that the accused should be removed from campus and or remanded into custody until an impartial hearing is held. Those convicted should never be returned to campus. In the case of rape or sexual assault, I think OxyAlert is not the correct tool for informing the student body. 

the author of this article is such an imbecile

I agree completely.  As an alumna I want my campus to be a safe environment for all students.  Acknowledging a report of a crime, regardless of whether the assailant is known, or whether there is confirmed evidence or not, is totally irrelevant to sharing an incident report with the community.  If anything, acknowledging the reports might help true victims step forward. 

If you look at the ACTUAL reason why the policy was FOLLOWED:

>In this particular case there was no ongoing danger of an unknown
repeat offence because the student involved was immediately identified
and interviewed by the police and by Student Affairs.

The Crime Alert System is not intended to be an instant police beat, sharing the juicy gossip of whatever crime was just reported. It is a safety tool used to help students take extra vigilance in helping to prevent crime based on recent trends; if there had been a burglary and the perpetrator not identified, it makes sense to tell students that they may be at a heightened risk of burglary. If there had been a burglary and the perpetrator arrested, it does not make sense to use a safety tool to disseminate that information.

Hi Lisa,

I see your problem with what Jonathan says regarding "incidents like
these" - reason number 1 in his letter. As long as the OxyAlert system is
there to report crimes, then I agree with you.

But Jonathan also mentions two other points why the College didn't send out
an alert: 

"2) This is a
very small community. Public notification makes identification of both the
survivor and the alleged perpetrator far more likely, violating the
privacy of those involved. 3) A public notification after an incident of
sexual assault could easily create an environment in which survivors are
unlikely to come forward for fear of being the subject of public
discussion and rumor."

Surely both of these points have merit. 

A final point, aren't you jumping to conclusions a bit at the end of your piece by saying that "To do otherwise is to allow
college policy to be driven by the belief that women are uniquely untrustworthy
and prone to malicious lies." As there are other reasons - the two points quoted above - for not reporting sexual assault instantly it seems a bit premature to me to claim that anything other than what you proscribe is driven by bias. 

A

As a psychologist at a university, I have to say that I cringe every.single.time a very public announcement is made about a sexual assault on campus because the ramifications for the survivor (and it is MUCH worse on a small campus) are huge.  The purpose of alerting a community to crimes that have occurred on campus is to alert them to potential danger to themselves by the alleged perpetrator of this incident.  Posting public notice of a sexual assault immediately after the incident reinforces the idea that most rape is stranger rape (as the president aptly said in his letter).  Some stranger hiding behind a dumpster waiting to jump out and kidnap and rape an innocent, unsuspecting undergrad walking home from the library in the dark.  This is just not the case in most situations on a college campus in that the perpetrator does not present an immediate threat to other people in the community.  The perpetrator may, however, present an ongoing threat to the survivor if the perpetrator gets word too quickly that a report has been made and an investigation is imminent.  Threats to stay quiet, social bullying and physical intimidation are not outside of the realm of possibility.   Even if that does not occur, as people are discussing and hypothesizing, etc. in their daily communication, the survivor is subject to any number of random inquiries that may lead them to feel like everyone knows they are the victim or to be reminded in every moment of the trauma they experienced or to feel the pressure to talk to random people in their lives about what happened.  A delayed, more aggregate data approach is, in my opinion, a much more survivor-friendly, accurate way to alert the campus that this is a problem in our community that the whole community needs to work to prevent.  

This is an interesting post.The policies agreed upon need to be followed for safety for all.
tmblr.co/Zdi-DtfjR4Xr 

Princeton (and apparently many other schools) have a policy of not  releasing their own data about crimes.  From an administator at Princeton:

"It remains unclear why the survey was never publicly released, but one
University administrator said the University did not want to draw
unwanted attention by publicizing the report's findings when they were
in line with national averages."

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2013/03/04/32954/

I want to know what OSAC would like to see out of an on campus alert that will actually help reduce the incidences of sexual assault at the school. Given that Oxy so small (2000 students) the message would have to be exceedingly vague (in order to protect the victim's anonymity). Because of this the report would have to be something like the following:

"A rape was reported by someone, somewhere off campus, last night and the alleged perpetrator was an acquaintance." 

That really does nothing to help prevent future assaults and will only stimulate gossip at a school where everyone knows everyone. Trust me, I just graduated.I wish OSAC would spend less time fighting with the administration over something that may or may not even be legal. Instead, anyone that has gone to Occidental knows that the student body has a serious binge drinking problem. Given that between 40% and 80% of sexual assaults (depending on whose numbers you are using) are committed when either the perpetrator, victim, or both have been drinking I imagine that would be a good place to start. I'm not victim blaming, its just a fact. If OSAC was serious about reducing the number of sexual assaults on campus they would focus on SA's instigating factors and not blow all their social capital on an alert system that will likely accomplish nothing in the end.

I think there may be an interesting analogy to barrrom fights (also alcohol fueld)