<p>(please see my last post for details). Where was Princeton Public Safety if this happened the night before?
Princeton University
Department of Public Safety </p>
<p>Campus Safety Alert</p>
<p>This notice is to advise you of an incident that concerns the University community.</p>
<p>Date: Sunday, April 19, 2009
Incident: Criminal Sexual Contact</p>
<p>The Department of Public Safety is alerting community members of an incident that took place at approximately 3: 20 a.m. Sunday, April 19, 2009, on the lawn between Witherspoon Hall and Alexander Hall (Alexander Beach).</p>
<p>A female Princeton University student reported that she was grabbed by a male suspect who reached under her clothes to touch her. The suspect had first approached the female student and attempted to speak with her, then grabbed her, preventing her from leaving after she attempted to walk away from him. The suspect released the victim and walked towards West College after another student witnessed the incident and intervened by attempting to pull the female student away.</p>
<p>The suspect is described as a Hispanic male, between 23 and 26 years of age, approximately 5'11", medium build, lean face with big eyes, with dark short-cropped hair, and a thin moustache. The suspect was wearing a light blue or gray button-down shirt and jeans. The clothing was described as loose or baggy fitting.</p>
<p>The Department of Public Safety continues to investigate this incident, will increase foot patrols around the campus in the evening hours and asks that any community member who has relevant information contact the department by calling (609) 258-1000 or via a confidential tip line on our website: <a href="https://tipline.princeton.edu/%5B/url%5D">https://tipline.princeton.edu/</a>.</p>
<p>These types of things are VERY UNCOMMON at Princeton. Princeton is almost universally accepted as having one of the safest campus in the nation. I believe college prowl*r gave Princeton an “A” for campus safety.</p>
<p>If you read my first post about the first (two) incidents, you’d know that that isn’t the point. Yes, Princeton is safe, I love Princeton, and have had a great time. But there is
Incompetency to REact to what is going on with students, only to OVERact about problems which don’t exist (grade deflation policies, eating club shutdowns etc).
WHY, ON THE NIGHT AFTER TWO INCIDENTS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT WITH THE SUSPECT STILL ON THE LOOSE WAS THERE NOT A WHOLE CREW OF PUBLIC SAFETY OFFICERS MANNING THE CAMPUS?
This is my question: who can answer it with a good heart that they are being honest?
a)The Princeton campus is TINY, this would not be difficult.
b)Right After the debate as to whether they should carry guns ended in them promising that they can do a great job monitoring so that they will never need guns in the first place, they show the community that they don’t really do a good job of either.
c) I know the area where the latest incident took place. It is a large span of grass and I have waved to classmates from very far away across it. It is in a visible part of campus. There was, given the location of the incident, no effort on the part of the University to provide “roaming” anything.
d) The faculty leaves its supposedly cherished undergrads behind all alone on campus every day at the end of the day (and for the weekend). We are adults, so while we don’t need constant care, we have the right to the same protection we would be afforded if we lived in a normal non-campus city or suburb. This seems to be over the University’s head…</p>
<p>2)THE SECOND ISSUE: The cover-up of this issue during Pre-Frosh weekend. There was no note to “tell your pre-frosh about this so that they too are careful.” Moreover, there are usually web updates on the daily princetonian website about large campus alerts, or just interesting things happening on campus on the weekend. These were not up on the Prince website, and a friend on the staff tells me (and I hypothesize) that they did not want to displease the administration (or, the administration made them) not put it up.</p>
<p>Thus, this is not abou the safety of the Priinceton campus, but rather the ineptitude and lack of compassionof the administration.
PS As an indication of how detached they are, go to the Princeton Website multimedia’s latest video entitled “students enact change” or something.Half of the students are interesting, and half are SO BORING AND EVEN STRANGE that I wonder why the admins thought they would make a good example</p>
<p>I don’t know why you are complaining. You already receive orders of magnitude more protection than 99.99% of people on this planet. I don’t know of any “normal non-campus city or suburb” that would dispatch dozens of additional police officers in response to an alleged sexual assault. You’re demanding an extraordinary level of protection, more extraordinary than that which you already have.</p>
<p>I was at the pre-frosh event, by the way. Both nights I was roaming the campus into the wee hours of the morning, noticing several campus police cars zip by and even a couple of public safety officers on foot patrol. You seem to expect that each and every student be in the view of a public safety officer at all times. If that’s not treating the students like children, I don’t know what is.</p>
<p>I don’t know what you want-- while princeton is generally a very safe place, its not exactly brilliant to be walking alone as a female at 3am, possibly drunk, and expect someone else to save you. They can’t have a ps officer covering every location on campus at all hours of the night-- there’s just no way that its feasible. Plus, i’m pretty sure that students would be quite upset about a psafety officer stationed on alexander beach on weekend nights (underage drinking arrests anyone?) There is way more protection on campus then there would be, for example, within the town of princeton, which presumably is where the man (men?) involved are from. Would you say that it is smart to walk around Penn, or Yale, or Harvard alone at 3 am as a female? I would be more comfortable in princeton than in any of those places, although I still think that its not a great idea anyway.</p>
<p>Finally, the university has absolutely no control over anything the prince publishes. They are completely self-supporting with their own endowments, and do not receive any university support-- they pay for the place that they use on campus and had to pay for the renovation of the building several years ago. The university does not subsidize the prince in anyway, so they have no way of telling them what to print or not print.</p>