Open Hunting Season At Wash U?

Two recent crimes have made big news here on campus and also apparently for the St. Louis metro area as a whole. First early Monday morning a female undergraduate student was sexually assaulted and robbed in the DeMun neighborhood just south of campus, and then just yesterday morning two undergraduates were mugged on the north end of the overpass to the Greenway walkway. I wonder if the publicity about these crimes is helping matters or hurting matters. Associate Vice Chancellor Steve Givens can be seen in numerous TV clips telling how the two mugged students did "everything right" in not fighting and in giving their assailant what he wanted. I am grateful our students were not hurt, but he is giving the message to criminals "come on over, we are ready to give you whatever you want and we will not fight back". That is the correct attitude for our students to have upon being accosted, but it sickens me that it may actually motivate criminals to target the university community even more. Our undergraduate student body is considered a bunch of unarmed, spoiled, rich kids who will gladly give up their parents' cash to whoever asks them. The crooks would be wise to try to differentiate the undergraduate students from the graduate students who tend to live off their own small stipends, or the many underpaid staff members. I am curious how much cash the walkway burglar received from the two undergrads there anyway. The thug would have been really mad to have mugged two people and only ended up with a few bucks.

I find the idea of using a whistle to be an interesting idea. I could see blowing one when a potential criminal is maybe 15 or 20 feet away from you, but once they are holding a gun or knife against you I do not see its benefit. You would almost have to judge in advance when an approaching person is a potential criminal, and then I could see people being accused of "racial profiling". I would hate for some of our male African-American students to have whistles blown at them just because people think they "might" be a criminal. With our school year drawing to a close and more students walking to off-campus residences at unusual hours I could see an increasing chance of more of these crimes occurring. More students should take advantage of the new Campus2Home shuttle program even if it may be not as convenient as walking straight home. Maybe Campus Police should hire some officers who are armed, "plain clothed" student lookalikes (i.e. young faced officers) who can patrol late at night where they are likely to be targeted. We definitely need to make arrests in some of these cases so that the local criminals know the pickings are not so easy on our campus.

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