A third alleged rape was reported at Cal Poly on Monday, according to a University Police Department crime alert. According to the alert, the reported rape occurred in the victim’s room in Poly Canyon Village on May 15.
As of press time, University Police Chief Bill Watton said there was not a lot of information available.
“We can’t release too much, other than to say this is the third sexual assault alert issued on campus,” Watton said. “Pretty much all we can say at this time is that the suspects are unique to each case. They are not interrelated.”
This is the third reported sexual assault at Cal Poly within the last week. Associated Students Inc. President Sarah Storelli said although the number of alleged sexual assaults reported in the last week seems high, it, in fact, conforms to statistics.
“Besides that we all live in San Luis Obispo, and think it is relatively safe, the fact is that one in four students will be sexually assaulted while they are at college,” Storelli said. “It’s quite disturbing, but also eye-opening.”
However, Kyle Rosso, a history senior and Sexual Assault Free Environment Resource (SAFER) program volunteer, said the number of assaults is not surprising.
“It’s not that three rapes have occurred, it’s that three rapes have been reported,” Rosso said. “In a campus of roughly 10,000 women, approximately 395 rapes occur each year. That’s one a day, and some days two. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence. What is uncommon is that they’re brave enough to report it.”
Rosso also said although the number of reports may raise concerns for safety, people should not be alarmed, or think students at Cal Poly are more likely to be victims of sexual assault.
“This doesn’t show that Cal Poly is more prone to sexual assault, it shows that people are confident in their resources,” he said. “It proves that it’s safer because these things are being reported, and because we respond to them this way.”
In response to the second alleged rape reported late last week, Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong wrote in an email to the student body that he was forming a “task-force” comprised of Storelli, Academic Senate Chair Rachel Fernflores and Vice President for Student Affairs Cornel Morton to examine the school’s attitudes toward sexual assaults. Storelli said in light of the recent reported rape, the task force would be paying special attention to campus culture.
“Right now we don’t have any specifics on what the task force will do because our meeting is tomorrow,” Storelli said. “This is an immediate and evident problem, and when we sit down, we will talk about how to deal with this. Otherwise, we just need to educate ourselves, and all of the different groups (on campus) need to make a conscious effort to come together and deal with these issues.”
In a telephone interview, Armstrong said the task force committee will take on the subject in a “marathon-like” approach not because it is in the news but because it is important and students need to feel safe. He said he is “deeply disturbed” by the incidents and is anxious to meet with the committee.
“We’re going to focus on what we’ve been doing and we’re going to look at what’s been going on on campus to bring awareness and where we can make improvements, where we have gaps,” Armstrong said. “I do think its important that victims of sexual violence feel safe enough to bring these incidents to our attention so they can be investigated. If people don’t feel comfortable enough to bring these to our attention then we have a deep problem. We don’t want incidents like these to occur at all but if they do, then we want young men and young women to speak up and let’s get to the bottom of what’s going on … but we need to be very proactive.”
Anybody with information about the alleged rape is asked to call UPD at (805) 756-2281.
Leticia Rodriguez, Kaytlyn Leslie and Hannah Croft contributed to this article.
““In a campus of roughly 10,000 women, approximately 395 rapes occur each year.”
Hold on a minute. Do you have a source for that number? Any sort of methodology?
Please tell me that you didn’t simply extrapolate some set of national statistics (which may have their own flaws) to Cal Poly. The entire United States is not a representative sample of Cal Poly’s campus. Simply extrapolating a national statistic to the campus leads to sampling bias.
Here’s an example: Let’s say that we are talking about the number of senior citizens. A quick check of Wikipedia reveals that around 17% of Americans are Senior Citizens. In a campus of around 25,000 people, that means that there are over 4000 senior citizens. Except, senior citizens to not attend Cal Poly at the same rate as the general population. You can see how this effects the validity of the results.
^Yeah, sadly most people don’t understand basic statistics principles.
http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/182369.pdf
Page 5. I think a US DOJ report qualifies as a valid source of information.
My point still stands, albeit to a lesser extent. Not all college campuses are created equal. Some are in major urban areas that have much higher overall crime rates.
There may be flaws in their methods of data gathering as well. However, to their credit, the people behind that report describe their methods very well, allowing armchair statisticians like myself to pick them apart.
Even if sampling bias is not a problem, I still think that the quote from SAFER is misleading if that is the data they are basing their numbers on. For one, that data attempts to measure both attempted and completed rapes, while the quote from the SAFER representative seems to suggest that the number represents completed rapes. Secondly, I think they have their numbers wrong.
Page 10 states: ” “only” about 1 in 36 college women (2.8 per-
cent) experience a completed rape or attempted rape in an academic year.”
.028*10,000 = 280. I’ll admit that’s still a disturbing number. But, it’s significantly less than the numbers quoted by Rosso.
If person A attempts to murder person B, does that make it any less horrible than if they actually murdered them? Person A would certainly still get charged by the authorities.
It’s sad that we’re even arguing semantics here. The fact that AT LEAST once a day somebody at Cal Poly attempts to rape another human being is a deplorable statistic in and of itself. The fact that EVERY FEW DAYS a rape is actually completed makes it even worse.
Cal Poly is not immune to rape just like it is not immune to racism or sexism or any other bigoted action one can think of. Just look over the past few years and there are enough examples to prove this (hint: start with the Crops House incident and go from there).
It’s time for people to wake up, leave their little bubble, and realize that these issues DO EXIST on our campus and that we need to do something about it.
The fact of the matter is NOBODY should ever be sexually assaulted or raped and we need to do something about that starting today.
On some level I agree. We should be doing something to prevent this sort of thing from happening. The question becomes how do we know if our selected course of action is having the desired effect? We have to be intellectually honest with ourselves. Even a slight exaggeration, like the one SAFER made in that quote hurts their credibility, and perhaps more importantly prevents us from knowing the true extend of the problem and the effectiveness of the solutions.
(On an unrelated side note, I personally feel that racism, sexism and pretty much any other kind of -ism is a constitutionally protected right, provided that you do not violate the rights of others in the process. As a result, I reject any government action to prevent or reduce racism or sexism outside of its own agencies)
I noticed that all three alerts stated that the woman in question was unconscious. Does upd consider “blacked out” to be unconscious? I find it difficult to fathom that all three women drank themselves to the point of passing out, and then somebody comes by and takes advantage of a completely unconscious female.
I completely agree with this
To all rape and sexual assault survivors,
No matter what anyone else says, by definition, not consenting means that it is rape/sexual assault. No one ever asks for it.
You are beautiful, loved and deserved so much better. Please know it’s not your fault.
Sincerely,
Someone whose been there.
Let these recent events be a message to all women attending college to be more cautious. If you’re drinking, don’t get carried away and get obliterated to the point where you can’t protect yourself, especially when you don’t have friends with you to look after you.
There’s always going to be people out there that would commit something as terrible as sexual assault/rape, so you need to be vigilant and not place yourselves in a more susceptible position. These acts could have prevented if the women involved were more cautious, assuming copious amounts of alcohol were involved. Exercise moderation and have at least one person with you that you trust.
The only person who can *prevent* an assault from happening is the perpetrator. While there are a number of ways that women can *reduce their risk* of being assaulted (such as moderating alcohol consumption), let’s remember to place the blame and prevention responsibility where it truly lies…with the perpetrator.
@ Developers. Let us take a moment and refer to a definition of racism:
“a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.”
Do you truly believe that someone who believes in racism can hold themselves back from stomping on the rights of others? By definition they think they are better and deserve to RULE other races. You are foolish to believe that a human can separate that type of belief system from everyday life.
More importantly, please be careful with your faux educated responses.
Debating statistical semantics on THIS forum about attempted vs completed rape is irresponsible and abhorrent. I acknowledge that it is important to interpret statistics correctly and in a transparent way…but hey…here’s an idea: instead of rolling out your statistical critique UNDERNEATH a story about three girls being allegedly raped in one week… how about you go to the alleged source of the ” statistical mistake” and have it up with them? Just an idea? Their name is printed right here in the article…couldn’t be easier. Or maybe you like visibly flexing your “intellect” in sensitive forums.
You couldn’t have found a better way to encourage survivors of abuse to feel like a debatable statistic.
“Sensitive forums”? Are you serious? It’s a newspaper, this isn’t a message board for the abused
@Developers!
May I recommend actually reading into the context of a statistic before so harshly criticizing a person and/or organization. The number you keep referring to was a statistic derived via a national phone survey conducted a number of years ago. The DoJ study itself, based on that survey, made an estimate that AT LEAST 350 rapes could occur each year on a college campus with 10,000 female students. So yes, maybe Rosso’s figure is a little larger than 350, but it’s still in that “at least” range, and we’re still talking about a rape occurring each day of the year here at Cal Poly….that figure should be staggering in and of itself.