The University’s response to the recent sexual assault is commendable. Not only was a flyer posted outside The Minaret office but also hand-delivered to our office by a security officer. On Monday and Tuesday, flyers were posted throughout the campus. We counted 17 throughout campus buildings.
Yet The Minaret and some students believe that more could be done. If a flyer is going to be posted on campus, it needs to draw attention to itself. Most of the flyers were posted on yellow paper but placed on pillars or bulletin boards where other flyers distract the student’s eye. A safety alert should stand out, and one way to draw attention would be to place the words ‘Safety Alert’ in a larger font on a larger than normal size piece of paper.’
Another solution that we’ve heard echoed among students is that a global e-mail would be a more comprehensive information method.’ If the University can issue several global e-mails about the fallout from the first rape story, then one global e-mail for the safety alert isn’t too much.
Yes, there is the possibility that as UT grows, the amount of global e-mails will increase, and the global emails will become a nuisance. There is also the argument that no one reads the global e-mail, but with a headline ‘Safety Alert: Sexual Assault Reported,’ we think people will be willing to read and then everyone will be aware. There will always be a downside, but that shouldn’t stop the University from offering the most comprehensive response.
We understand that the University may consider itself responsible for avoiding hysteria by sending out a global e-mail with each reported sexual assault, but better to have worried students than allowing them to endanger themselves by not knowing to be even more careful.
Information is important for accuracy and safety. Even at The Minaret we’ve had difficulty acquiring information about the assault because TPD didn’t have a record of the open investigation and could only give us very limited information. But we worked hard, calling around all day, back and forth with Security and TPD to do our best to serve the campus, and we are still waiting for more information, which will be included on theminaretonline.com.
Furthermore, we give considerable thought to publishing an article as sensitive and significant as a reported sexual assault. Since as of Tuesday there was no official acknowledgment from TPD that a rape occurred, we made the choice to refer to the ‘victim’ as ‘woman.’ We did not think ‘victim’ was the right word when a crime is still being investigated. However, the term ‘alleged victim’ seemed to add insult to injury if there was a rape. Instead we used the word ‘woman.’ Likewise, to be fair to the male involved, we said that no information had been released about ‘a perpetrator’ instead of ‘the perpetrator’ to show respect for the ongoing investigation and the possibility that an incident may not have occurred and may or may not have a specific perpetrator.
When the victim from the Gasparilla dorm rape came forward through a website comment and said that newspapers misreported her story, we take it seriously. Our goal is to be as accurate as possible, and we want to know when we make mistakes. The Minaret can’t correct mistakes that we don’t know we made.
We just wanted to share a few suggestions for the University to continue improving their commitment to make the campus safe and to share our perspective on the difficulties that The Minaret and any public office such as Campus Security must go through to manage each situation as gently as possible.