Everyone on campus is currently shocked, the reason being a sexual assault on a Haverford student by an unknown assailant that happened a couple of days ago. For most students, the way that they learned about the assault was from unofficial sources – the Go!Boards (forums on the student section of the Haverford website) or the Anonymous Confession Boards (essentially a gossip forum online) – rather than the college itself. Whilst Haverford has an early-warning alert system, put in place after the Virginia Tech shootings, that informs students by text message of what’s happening, this wasn’t used in this case, which is causing some consternation.
Haverford is a very safe school. I have never felt unsafe in Edinburgh either, but whilst I’m quite happy walking around alone at night here, I would probably be more circumspect about it back home. Although Haverford’s campus is entirely open to the public, there have been very few criminal incidents, although within the past month there has also been a fight in which a knife was pulled, a robbery and a flasher as well as the most recent assault. However, aside from these incidents I can’t think of anything of a similar nature that has happened during my time here.
The recent sexual assault has caused the student body to question how Haverford should continue. Not only has there been widespread consternation at the slow response by the administration in informing everyone about what happened (it took three and a half hours), but students are asking whether the campus should be closed to the public, whether there should be CCTV cameras placed in the most isolated areas (a large portion of the campus is woodland), whether Safety & Security patrols should be increased, and whether there should be more emergency phones on campus. Meetings between students, staff and the administration are to be held later this week to discuss all of these issues. The main problem seems to be that many students want to continue not feeling afraid as they walk around campus, but also that they don’t want intrusions such as CCTV to become part of the norm.
To someone from a university slap-bang in the city, all of these debates can seem fairly naïve, but students here worry about how any new security measures will fit in with the Honour Code, and the lack of cynicism can seem genuinely refreshing. There is no presumption that bad things will happen to students whilst at uni, and common problems in Edinburgh such as drinks being spiked or bikes being stolen just don’t happen here. Haverford is very far removed from the “real world”, despite being only a fifteen-minute car journey from the city line (and therefore from the ghetto, as once you cross into Philadelphia proper, the ghetto begins), and when the real world intrudes it can feel like the haverbubble has been burst.
Surely the best way to deal with this type of incident is to improve communication from the authorities to students, rather than begin a knee-jerk reaction of installing CCTV etc. Basic keep-yourself-safe procedures should be revised, like not walking alone at night. Let's hope that this was just an isolated incident, although I wonder how long Haverford can keep the real world at bay.