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St. Cloud State University
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Assault alerts students
By Anne Osterberg
Published:
Monday, October 21, 2002
SCSU’s Public Safety Department is issuing safety alerts after an assault occurred earlier last week.
Safety alerts are issued on campus every time a crime is considered to be an immediate threat to students and employees. Alerts promote safety and awareness among students and faculty on and off campus.
As some students may have noticed, safety alerts have been posted to inform students of certain issues that could be threatening in their everyday lives. The PSD is also searching for ways to distribute safety alerts to students who live off campus.
According to Miles Heckendorn, director of the PSD, alerts are only posted for seven days.
“We post the alerts whenever it is necessary,” Heckendorn said. “It depends on what issues are relevant for students, faculty and staff. Safety is very important.”
Safety alerts began in 1992, when the PSD issued annual public reports to students and faculty. This began with the Jeanne Clery Discloses of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime and Security Act.
The Clery Act is named for the 19-year-old Lehigh University freshman, Jeanne Ann Clery, who was raped and murdered while asleep in her residence hall room.
According to the Jeanne Clery Act, Clery’s parents discovered that the university hadn’t released information about up to 38 violent crimes on campus within three years of the murder.
The Clery’s joined with other victims of campus crimes and persuaded Congress to enact a law requiring colleges and universities to disclose information about crime on and around their campuses.
President George Bush signed the Student-To-Know and Campus Security Act into law November 8, 1990. In 1998 the law was formally named in memory of Jeanne Clery.
Since 1990 schools have been required to issue warnings to the campus community about crimes that may pose a threat. Each institution with a security department must have a public crime log.
Since 1992, SCSU has published safety alerts to promote crime prevention.
The PSD has been working hard on finding additional ways to submit safety alerts to students on and off campus.
“We want to reach out to the community,” Heckendorn said.
According to Heckendorn,there are many ways alerts have been issued. Hard-copy bright yellow copies have been posted on doors and in residential halls on campus. In addition, the PSD has been working hard on producing mass e-mails to reach students with and without Husky e-mail addresses.
Heckendorn also wrote a personal letter concerning the safety of students’ vehicles in Q-lot and sent it to students living in the residence halls.
Because only a small percentage of students see the signs, the PSD is finding alternative methods of distributing safety alerts such as the internet. Many sources have been issued in the SCSU Announce as well as U-News for employees.
“We try to be informative and educative as possible. We do what we can,” Heckendorn said. “It is hard to get 14,000 students’ attention, when only 3,000 live on campus.”
“I’ve seen many Safety Alerts,” said Zachary Dorholt, a fourth year student. “It made me disturbed to know that something like that is happening around here.”
According to Heckendorn, being informed is only part of the safety solution.
“Personal safety is the paramount ability to harden yourself as a target, it is just important as education is,” Heckendorn said.
