tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/campus-crime-19153/articlesCampus crime – The Conversation2020-07-02T19:06:20Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1409272020-07-02T19:06:20Z2020-07-02T19:06:20ZHow anti-Black racism on Canadian university campuses robs us all<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343058/original/file-20200621-43225-ucjv2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=273%2C52%2C8388%2C5033&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two books published this year explore how anti-Blackness on Canadian university campuses shapes higher education for Black students. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I attended Western University in the early 2000s with a cohort of first-generation Black Canadian friends from my high school in Ajax, Ont. At Western, we became active in the Black Student Association (BSA). The BSA pushed the department of English to offer a course on African American literature. They were reportedly told by the reigning chair that there was no need to do so since there were so few Black students on campus. (Ironically, “Major in yourself” was the university’s main marketing slogan at the time).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.mqup.ca/black-atlantic-reconsidered--the-products-9780773545083.php">Black Canadian literature dates back to the late 18th century</a>, as do critiques of Canadian racism. In this moment, prominent young Black Canadian writers and activists, emerging from a white supremacist Canadian university system, are writing and speaking openly about the ways their experiences in higher education have shaped their activism. Two recently published memoirs by Black Canadian writers, look at racism on campus and critique systemic racism, anti-Blackness and police brutality in Canada.</p>
<h2>Policing in the university</h2>
<p>Desmond Cole’s <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/536075/the-skin-were-in-by-desmond-cole/9780385686341"><em>The Skin We’re In</em></a> includes a vignette from his time at Queen’s University. In it, Cole remembers being stopped by two police officers late one evening while taking his usual shortcut across campus: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The cops left me waiting in the glare of their headlights as they presumably ran my name through their computer. I was so afraid. I thought about screaming for help if anything happened – I feared no one would hear me. One of the officers finally returned with my ID, and when I asked him why he’d stopped me, he casually offered that there’d been some ‘suspicious activity in the area.’ Over the course of the next few years, I would be stopped or followed dozens of times by the police in Kingston and Toronto ….</p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342550/original/file-20200617-94040-1tvfvqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342550/original/file-20200617-94040-1tvfvqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342550/original/file-20200617-94040-1tvfvqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342550/original/file-20200617-94040-1tvfvqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342550/original/file-20200617-94040-1tvfvqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342550/original/file-20200617-94040-1tvfvqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342550/original/file-20200617-94040-1tvfvqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342550/original/file-20200617-94040-1tvfvqd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Desmond Cole’s memoir.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Penguin Random House)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>That <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/kingston-police-more-likely-to-stop-blacks-study-finds/article18228211/">Black people in Kingston are 2.5 times more likely to be stopped by the Kingston Police Department</a> without cause is no secret, nor is their connection to Queen’s University. The <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/1807/77464">KPD’s discriminatory conduct</a> has made national headlines in the past and is the subject of academic research. </p>
<p>The problem of anti-Black racism on campus <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/race-played-role-university-ottawa-investigator-1.5289038">is certainly not limited to Queen’s University</a>. But as Desmond Cole’s work shows, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/9781442688926">on elite Canadian university campuses even the best, brightest and most gifted Black Canadian students are subject to discriminatory treatment</a>, which can change the trajectory of their lives, or stop it altogether. Canadian politeness and middle-class respectability cannot save Black students and it is a shocking revelation to some. </p>
<h2>Black on campus</h2>
<p>No less chilling are the experiences of journalist Eternity Martis. In her searing memoir, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/605288/they-said-this-would-be-fun-by-eternity-martis/9780771062186"><em>They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up</em></a>, the writer depicts London, Ont., where Western University is based, and elite Canadian spaces like it as terrifying sites of racial aggression where white privilege runs unchecked and young Black students are left to fend for themselves.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342548/original/file-20200617-94040-nx0a0o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342548/original/file-20200617-94040-nx0a0o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342548/original/file-20200617-94040-nx0a0o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342548/original/file-20200617-94040-nx0a0o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342548/original/file-20200617-94040-nx0a0o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342548/original/file-20200617-94040-nx0a0o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342548/original/file-20200617-94040-nx0a0o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342548/original/file-20200617-94040-nx0a0o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eternity Martis’s university memoir details.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Penguin Random House)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>While on campus, Martis experiences a vicious racist verbal assault and in reporting to campus security is told, that despite the schools’s zero-tolerance policy for discrimination, there are no cameras witnessing the event so there will be no follow up. When she asks what happens if the attacker repeats his act again, she is told, “Well, hopefully, someone will report it and we’ll be able to get him then.”</p>
<p>As she writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I thought about the surveillance around the campus. How could there be no cameras in one of the busiest areas? Worse, how could an incident of this magnitude be dropped just like that, only to let it happen to another person? By then I had experienced a host of issues in the city and on campus that I’d handled myself, even when the weight of carrying it alone felt enormous. The one time I had asked for help, nothing could be done. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Martis’s experiences are anything but isolated. This year, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/queens-university-chown-note-1.5318580">a seemingly similar process played out on the campus where I work</a>. While Indigenous students were the target of racial violence in their residence hall, a hall that has been plagued with similar problems in the past, <a href="https://www.queensjournal.ca/story/2020-01-17/news/update-kingston-police-confirm-journal-report/">no guilty parties were ever able to be identified or held responsible</a>. Theorist Simone Browne might say that one of the reasons for this lack of efficacy in terms of protecting Black and Indigenous students is that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822375302">campus security surveillance, like all police mechanisms, was never meant to factor the need to protect students who are not white</a>.</p>
<h2>Black scholars as Black activists</h2>
<p>Black students were at the heart of some of the most successful Black Lives Matter–Toronto demonstrations and organizing.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://uofrpress.ca/Books/U/Until-We-Are-Free"><em>Until We Are Free</em></a>, BLM Toronto co-founders Sandy Hudson and Rodney Diverlus explain that “The Black Lives Matter–Toronto Freedom School and the Canadian Freedom Intensive are two of our most important initiatives aimed at combating the absence of Blackness in traditional education; providing affirming, queer-positive education for our young people; providing an avenue for children to be involved in the movement and providing political education to adults.” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1270456368416292865"}"></div></p>
<p>In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and protests on police violence, Black reading lists in Canada have proliferated along with the explosion of the Twitter hashtag #BlackintheIvory. Ostensibly, <a href="https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/you-must-be-a-basketball-player">there is no Ivy League in Canada but we still have much to learn about systemic racism in academia</a>. </p>
<p>Some contemporary Black Canadian writers come to understand their experience in higher education as part of a continuum of racist violence and systemic racism. That does not end with Martis and Cole or at the university gates. </p>
<p>Canadian universities are sites of civic education and social reproduction. Ultimately, we rob ourselves and Black communities when we rob Black students of their humanity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140927/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristin Moriah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Young Black Canadian writers like Desmond Cole and Eternity Martis look at anti-Black racism on campus.Kristin Moriah, Assistant Professor of African American Literary Studies, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/909952018-02-01T22:43:20Z2018-02-01T22:43:20ZHow serial killers capitalize on chaos, according to an expert<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204299/original/file-20180131-157462-1xqoic8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Serial killers are strategic and clever, usually choosing cities or towns in the midst of upheaval to commit their heinous crimes so they can fly under the radar.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2017, the University of Wisconsin-Madison was ranked by the Princeton Review as the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/uw-madison-top-party-school_us_57c09881e4b04193420f1b9c">top party school</a> in the United States, but it’s also the focus of my recent true crime title, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M6D8URV/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb"><em>Mad City</em></a>.</p>
<p>That’s because in the wake of the so-called <a href="https://summerof.love/">Summer of Love</a> in 1967 — from the late 1960s through to the mid-70s — the university was a much different kind of place. </p>
<p>It was a period when anti-Vietnam War protests and inevitable counter-protests supplemented draft-card burnings. Sit-ins meant to waylay political visits and right-of-centre speakers <a href="https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-040/?action=more_essay">were all at high tide.</a> </p>
<p><a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-berkeley-protests-20170827-story.html">Sound familiar?</a></p>
<p>The UW campus at the time was the epicentre of a particularly vitriolic brand of hyper-partisan tribalism as members of the Chicago Seven, and the more violent Weather Underground, <a href="https://www.library.wisc.edu/archives/exhibits/campus-history-projects/protests-social-action-at-uw-madison-during-the-20th-century/1970-1979/">were assembling</a> in what was a progressive island in an ocean of old-fashioned — and often intolerant — dairyland social conservatism.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204308/original/file-20180131-157462-1c6k0w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204308/original/file-20180131-157462-1c6k0w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204308/original/file-20180131-157462-1c6k0w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204308/original/file-20180131-157462-1c6k0w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204308/original/file-20180131-157462-1c6k0w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204308/original/file-20180131-157462-1c6k0w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204308/original/file-20180131-157462-1c6k0w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Student protesters march at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to protest the Vietnam War in January 1965.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Creative Commons)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A homegrown group, known as <a href="https://www.trackingterrorism.org/group/new-years-gang">the New Year’s Gang</a>, was allowed to fester and escalate unchecked. It went so far as to use an improvised car bomb to destroy the campus physics building to protest its use as a U.S. Army think tank.</p>
<p>The blast killed a researcher in no way affiliated with any military work, and permanently maimed three students and staff members.</p>
<p>The four men responsible for the bombing were rightly branded as terrorists and immediately placed on the FBI’s most wanted list. Three members were ultimately arrested and the fourth was never seen or heard from again. </p>
<h2>Serial killers came calling</h2>
<p>But amid the hunt for the New Year’s Gang, as the university was teetering on a precipice of turmoil and rioting for the sake of rioting became a weekly occurrence, others showed up when no one was looking. </p>
<p>They all came with a plan.</p>
<p>Beginning in 1967 with an odious medical resident named <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/stabbed-beaten-garroted-two-gloves-11206816">Niels Bjorn Jorgensen</a> — who, I hypothesize in the book for the first time, had already murdered at least five people, including his own brother — UW-Madison emerged as a select destination for at least three serial killers. </p>
<p>They posed as students, job applicants and innocuous passers-through. </p>
<p>During the next 15 years, seven women were murdered on or immediately adjacent to the UW-Madison campus in increasingly heinous ways. An eighth was later killed while leaving the campus in Stevens Point in the fall of 1984. </p>
<p>It’s a record for consecutive sex slayings within a single university system that no one wants to advertise — not then and certainly not now. </p>
<p>But the reality is that from freshman <a href="http://host.madison.com/news/local/the-murder-at-uw-still-stings-killer-of-woman-has/article_3fc2cd42-23f4-5250-8872-34ed7e04da4c.html">Christine Rothschild</a>, strangled on campus the day before final exams in the spring of ’67, to senior <a href="http://www.nbc15.com/home/headlines/Cold-Case-Investigation--Donna-Mraz-Murder-339397972.html">Donna Mraz</a>, slashed and stabbed to death while walking past the varsity stadium in the summer of ’82, opportunistic killers saw an embroiled campus. </p>
<p>And they surmised that the white noise of activism and political agitation was sure to obfuscate their presence.</p>
<p>They guessed right.</p>
<h2>‘Place-specific crimes’</h2>
<p>Gateway crimes, from peeping and prowling to stalking lecture halls and dorm rooms, all went unrecognized and were allowed to escalate amid a larger culture war where the campus police — and even the encompassing Madison city police — were effectively told to stand down and disengage. Again, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/charlottesville-response-to-white-supremacist-rally-sharply-criticized-in-new-report/2017/12/01/9c59fe98-d6a3-11e7-a986-d0a9770d9a3e_story.html?utm_term=.b9f7c79907e5">a familiar refrain today.</a> </p>
<p>In criminology, we refer to episodes like the 15-year UW phenomenon — from 1967 to 1982 — as place-specific crime. It’s a concept, still only in its adolescence, that finally recognizes that violent offenders are more strategic and logistically oriented than previously thought.</p>
<p>The concept describes how they proactively and discriminately select cities, and even <a href="https://www.insidetoronto.com/news-story/8098290-more-murder-charges-laid-in-gay-village-serial-killer-case/">places within those cities</a> such as polarized college campuses, to carry out and just as quickly bury their crimes within a bigger haystack of mayhem, angst and misguided aggression. </p>
<p>It explains how and why specific physical environments not only impart some ritual or symbolic significance for the killers, but also how they exploit police apathy and public disenfranchisement in those same select locales.</p>
<p>It is, after all, how and why Gordon Cummings, the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4167276/How-Blackout-Ripper-killed-horrifically.html">so-called Blackout Ripper</a>, used six days of night in London during the 1942 Nazi bombing raids to rape and murder four women. </p>
<p>It’s how and why, as we’ve confirmed at the <a href="http://www.murderdata.org/">Murder Accountability Project</a>, nearly 15 per cent of all unsolved stranglings committed in the United States between 2003 and 2015 have occurred in the same 12-mile stretch <a href="https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/5955vd/is-there-a-serial-killer-roaming-the-streets-of-chicago">in Chicago.</a> </p>
<p>They’re murders committed for the most part by a single killer and occurring at the rate of two a year, but buried strategically among an average of 700 other murders annually. The killer — I call him the Millennium Strangler — knows precisely what he’s doing. He set up shop in Chicago for a reason. It’s murder-by-numbers, by design. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204300/original/file-20180131-157488-1hnacrx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204300/original/file-20180131-157488-1hnacrx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204300/original/file-20180131-157488-1hnacrx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204300/original/file-20180131-157488-1hnacrx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204300/original/file-20180131-157488-1hnacrx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204300/original/file-20180131-157488-1hnacrx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204300/original/file-20180131-157488-1hnacrx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Murder Accountability Project)</span></span>
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<p>When I wrote <em>Mad City</em> as a visiting scholar at Vanderbilt University in the winter of 2016, it was an otherwise untold story of how divisive campus politics and university administrators, addled by gelatinous vertebrae, enabled the murders of students, staff and local Madison residents by psychopaths hiding in plain sight.</p>
<p>I felt I might be dredging up a dark chapter in history that few would want to revisit. </p>
<p>But within only a matter of months, and following a surreal and tragicomic presidential election, I found it was Madison of 1967 all over again — everywhere in America, no less, as protests erupted in the streets and on college campuses, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/12/us/charlottesville-white-nationalists-rally/index.html">often violently.</a> </p>
<p>It was no longer a story of the past. It had very quickly become a diagnosis of the present. It was the real and unvarnished State of the Union. </p>
<h2>‘A bill will come’</h2>
<p>Parables about those who fail to learn from history aside, once the political dust settles, a tally will need to be taken of the terrible toll of current partisan turmoil. </p>
<p>Place-specific crime is a real thing; campus crime, especially campus murder, is equally real. A bill will come due.</p>
<p>We know that motivated predators, as they have before, may well be using these very distractions to install themselves in undetected fashion at universities across the country. The best indication of future behaviour is, of course, prior behaviour. Violent crime ebbs and flows in cycles — including serial crime. </p>
<p>At the Murder Accountability Project, we will track and report on the campuses that, like UW-Madison, yield the highest death toll when all is said and done.</p>
<p>It will likely come as little surprise that the most politically divisive campuses, replete with partisan rhetoric and where <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/24/us/michigan-state-president-resigns/index.html">entrusted administrators suffer from decision paralysis</a> — just as UW-Madison once did — may eventually be revealed for the hunting grounds they are. </p>
<p>The term “safe space” is a misnomer. Try as one may, no spaces, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-furedi-safe-space-20170105-story.html">much less a university campus</a>, can ever be truly hermetically sealed. The more effort it takes to engineer these spaces, as it turns out, the greater the real danger. </p>
<p>Whether it’s 1967 or 2018, campus predators will always know as much.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Arntfield has received funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council & Fulbright Canada.</span></em></p>As Toronto reacts to the news that a killer was preying on victims in the city’s gay village, an expert on serial killers explains how violent offenders are more strategic than previously thought.Michael Arntfield, Associate Professor of Criminology & English Literature, Western UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/608142016-06-09T14:33:22Z2016-06-09T14:33:22ZStanford sexual assault: how social media gave a voice to the victim<p>The internet has erupted in fury after the sentencing of Brock Turner, a star athlete for the Stanford University swim team, who was convicted of three sexual offences, and more specifically of assaulting an unconscious, intoxicated 23-year-old woman behind a dumpster. Judge Aaron Persky <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/us/outrage-in-stanford-rape-case-over-dueling-statements-of-victim-and-attackers-father.html?_r=0">only sentenced Turner to six months in county jail</a>, noting that a harsher sentence would have a “severe” impact on him. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.ukMaa7m21#.caxXXyWGK">victim’s court statement to Turner</a> – a powerful, harrowing 12-page account of the impact the crime has had on her – went viral, with more than 13m views on Buzzfeed alone. So too, did a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/06/05/3784913/stanford-sexual-assault-dad-letter/">letter by Turner’s father</a>, defending his son – lamenting how his life should not be ruined by “20 minutes of action”. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/06/brock-turners-friend-pens-letter-of-support.html">letter by Turner’s female friend,</a> Leslie Rasmussen, was also released, claiming “rape on campuses isn’t always because people are rapists”. Cue <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36459504">further internet furore</a>. </p>
<p>Online campaigns to recall Judge Persky have earned over 500,000 signatures. Think pieces, blog posts, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/videos/justice/2016/06/06/stanford-rape-survivor-letter-brock-allen-turner-ashleigh-banfield-orig.cnn">CNN videos</a>, and <a href="http://www.theonion.com/video/college-basketball-star-heroically-overcomes-tragi-19097">spoofs by The Onion</a> have been circulated and recirculated on social media, fuelled by vigorous discussions on Facebook and Twitter – marked by hashtags like <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/brockturner">#BrockTurner</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Stanfordrapevictim&src=typd">#Stanfordrapevictim</a>. </p>
<h2>Talking about rape</h2>
<p>As a researcher <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/researchHighlights/societyMediaAndScience/Rape-survivors.aspx">studying the impact of social media on discussions about rape</a>, I am watching a spectacular case study unfold in real time. As an activist, it feels like one case has finally sparked the conversation we need to have about sexual assault – a crime which affects millions of people. And as <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/dark-chapter-my-rape-regrowth-and-recovery-1.2366419">a rape survivor myself</a>, it feels like for once, the victim’s voice is being publicly heard and valued.</p>
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<p>When <a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/woman/as-a-tourist-in-belfast-my-rape-was-shock-news-so-why-did-you-forget-about-it-and-me-so-quickly-28495088.html">my own rape took place eight years ago in Belfast</a>, a much smaller scale media flurry ensued. Like the recent Stanford victim, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8040762.stm">I found myself Googling news stories on my assault</a>, and felt the surreal displacement of reading what complete strangers <a href="http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/12289">were saying</a> publicly about something very personal which had happened to me. And yet, nowhere in any of that coverage was there a place for myself, the victim, to speak. </p>
<p>Traditional media provides little platform for the victim’s side of the story to be heard. There is an assumption we are weak, ashamed, our lives ruined. And when there is the opportunity to speak, we are expected to summarise within a few soundbites, a brief interview, or a short number of words the enormity of an event that has changed our lives forever. </p>
<p>Daytime talk shows and news programmes may provide exclusive interviews with “brave” survivors, but often these focus on the individual emotional suffering of their experience, without linking their case to larger systemic problems in how our society handles sexual assault. And yet, who else but the survivors can provide firsthand knowledge of the many ways in which our criminal justice systems, our educational institutions, and our public discourses fail to adequately address the reality of rape and sexual assault? </p>
<h2>Helping to heal</h2>
<p>What is remarkable about the Stanford assault victim’s statement is that it was circulated uncut, at 7,244 words, and that it tells her whole story on her own terms. In so doing, it provides a poignant, elegant, undiminished account of the many small and big injustices rape survivors have to face on a daily basis. Despite its length, within the course of a few days, millions had read her statement and were continuing to share and comment on it. </p>
<p>That is the power of social media. Unlike television, radio, or print journalism, there is no concern over column inches or expensive airtime, so individual writing can be expansive and more thorough. Social media can document the much longer term, often lifelong impact of rape on a survivor’s life. </p>
<p>It is clear from my own research, that social media allows readers to connect the dots, between their own experience and the ones they read about, which can be an important part of the healing process. And without social media, we may never have known about the many women who came forward <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/31/bill-cosby-sexual-abuse-claims-57-women-dates-public-accusations">with allegations against Bill Cosby</a>.</p>
<p>In the case of Brock Turner, social media has amplified the many thoughts of the public on all sides of the story. Feminists and rape survivors have been vocal in support of the victim, but so too, have “meninists” and rape apologists in undermining her claims. Likewise, we are hearing from legal scholars and racial inequality activists, comparing Brock Turner’s sentence <a href="https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/brock-turner-rape-case-sentencing-racial-bias">to those of black men unjustly imprisoned for rape</a> or <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-brock-turner-cory-batey-show-race-affects-sentencing-article-1.2664945">black men found guilty in similar circumstances</a>.</p>
<p>Regardless of your own stance, these are all legitimate voices and the opinions of real people – the same people who might be <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-jury-bias-preventing-justice-for-rape-victims-60090">serving on a jury</a>, or reacting to a rape allegation and choosing to believe or ridicule it.</p>
<p>These recent outpourings on social media have served as a barometer for what the general public actually thinks about rape. Due to its intersections on class, privilege, criminal justice, and elite institutions, this particular rape has ignited a widespread and furious debate – but one which, most importantly, has at its centre a “voice” from the victim herself. And in that sense, this case is a game changer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60814/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Winnie M Li is Co-Founder of the Clear Lines Festival, a not-for-profit, voluntary organisation dedicated to addressing sexual assault and consent through the the arts and discussion. She receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council for her academic research. </span></em></p>The Stanford rape case ignited a social media fury and started discussions around rape that are long overdue.Winnie M Li, PhD researcher in the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political ScienceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/455382015-08-03T10:17:53Z2015-08-03T10:17:53ZAfter Cincinnati, the big question: who are the campus police, anyway?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90514/original/image-20150801-17151-pbgm3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It was only in the seventies that campus police came to be formally recognized.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/inventorchris2/8210469306/in/photolist-dvwNtC-5dJRhh-6voQ7g-9hrRCd-7XMBuQ-9nFYZo-nLdpEM-a3U9dK-82nxSZ-fyNfSW-7RXLgA-9Z6rRF-bVBNTK-9nCXqH-872zQ-dvwNqj-7HFjSC-9nCYne-cAKLcj-9nFZMQ-fypmH2-dvrdrg-dvFhwR-9zo1kE-dhjS15-dzpsem-dV6Gat-dziXhx-3KDAvi-bUqa8S-o1DLsd-d13eWU-gLxWjE-psfDE4-51rTbH-7RUydH-kDzYUq-82nxcn-dvLSnW-9nFZUQ-akxr6G-nLdxfB-bn3KrA-dgag22-cbeQNU-dhjS6u-9nCY4K-9nCYrX-nZSKh8-eaiqak">C Holmes</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 29, University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/us/university-of-cincinnati-officer-indicted-in-shooting-death-of-motorist.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article">indicted</a> on murder charges in the shooting death of unarmed motorist Samuel Dubose. </p>
<p>In 2013, University of South Alabama police officer Trevis Austin shot and killed Gil Collar, an 18-year-old freshman who was running around the campus nude while apparently under the influence of a new hallucinogenic drug called <a href="http://blog.al.com/live/2013/03/what_is_25-i_the_drug_used_by.html">25-I</a>. A grand jury convened in that case declined to indict Officer Austin.</p>
<p>Incidents like these have raised <em>major</em> concerns about how <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/31/campus-police-officers-perceptions-samuel-dubose-shooting">campus police officers</a> interact with citizens.</p>
<p>While campus police departments have existed since the late 1960s, people typically know little about these officers, their training or their jurisdictional authority.</p>
<p>How did campus police evolve and what is their role, mission and authority?</p>
<h2>Enforcing rules on college campuses</h2>
<p>American colleges and universities have existed for over 400 years and have always had a great deal of <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/sociology/sociology-general-interest/dark-side-ivory-tower-campus-crime-social-problem?format=PB">violence, vice and victimization</a>.</p>
<p>For much of their history, colleges and universities handled violations of campus rules – including serious violations of the law – internally under the legal doctrine <a href="http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/philip_lee/files/vol8lee.pdf"><em>in loco parentis</em></a>, Latin for “in place of the parents.” </p>
<p>The doctrine allowed colleges to regulate students’ personal conduct, including speech and movement, and take disciplinary action against them without a hearing. </p>
<p>That tradition effectively ended in 1961 in the case of <a href="http://www.stetson.edu/law/faculty/bickel/civilrights/media/case-digest-dixon-v-alabama.pdf">Dixon v Alabama State Board of Education</a>, where the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that students had a due process right to hearings relating to disciplinary matters. </p>
<p>That ruling helped pave the way for the creation of campus police departments to help regulate student conduct. </p>
<h2>Police on campus</h2>
<p>Although the first known instance of police officers <a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/ajpol11&div=18&id=&page=">patrolling a college campus</a> occurred in 1899 when Yale University hired two off-duty City of New Haven police officers to patrol the campus at night, that type of arrangement remained unique through most of the 20th century. Instead, deans of students and campus watchmen – who were little more than maintenance personnel – handled student violations of campus rules. </p>
<p>It was in the late 1960s that things dramatically changed. Local police officers arrived on many college campuses in response to student protests and riots relating to the Vietnam War. Encounters with police officers often left students bruised, battered and in handcuffs; sometimes the encounters were fatal.</p>
<p>As Political Science Professor Jennifer Burke and I have shown in our research on <a href="http://www.ccthomas.com/details.cfm?P_ISBN13=9780398088576">campus crime</a>, alumni and members of boards of regents (the governing body that oversees a particular university) were horrified at having local police on their campuses. </p>
<p>And so they joined with college and university presidents to lobby state legislatures to allow schools to create their own police departments that would employ sworn officers with full arrest powers. </p>
<h2>Birth and development of campus police</h2>
<p>By the early 1970s, enabling legislation and the demise of <em>in loco parentis</em> redefined the relationship of universities with their students. It was during that decade that state-sanctioned campus police departments slowly began to appear around the country. </p>
<p>Large, public universities where much <a href="http://archives.library.wisc.edu/uw-archives/exhibits/protests/1960s.html">student unrest</a> had taken place were generally the first to create campus police departments. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90512/original/image-20150801-17158-1dr90zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90512/original/image-20150801-17158-1dr90zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90512/original/image-20150801-17158-1dr90zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90512/original/image-20150801-17158-1dr90zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90512/original/image-20150801-17158-1dr90zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90512/original/image-20150801-17158-1dr90zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90512/original/image-20150801-17158-1dr90zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The responsibilities of today’s campus police extend beyond the ivory tower.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/therealmichaelmoore/5495714207/in/photolist-9nCYne-9nCXqH-9nFZMQ-6iP4uL-5AxiFe-aFn7SA-8oXzNh-akDipx-akDehk-akDemP-akG1Hu-aFisp4-akG2pC-akG1DY-akDczv-akDdf4-8JUo7G-akDeWn-5rMJv-9nFYUJ-aFigTk-aFixug-9nFYZo-akFTiQ-bknmh6-9nCXvr-aFnavU-7Tx3yN-jsfq8h-9nFZUQ-aFigmZ-aFn5Uj-aFn6Zw-aFn4kh-aFn4Ps-aFnd1s-aFn6ns-aFn9oh-aFin38-aFinAe-aFijZT-c6kA41-9nFYNY-aFn3HJ-9nCY4K-9nCYrX-pripqq-7o3cg-7o5hU-7o5Vh">Michael Moore</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>Typically, these early agencies were run by experienced, senior-level officers hired from local police departments. They were given the title of “Chief of Campus Police” and the latitude to hire and fire officers as needed. </p>
<p>Officers hired by these departments were usually required to complete the same academy training that municipal police officers were required to complete. </p>
<p>During the 1980s, the pace at which campus police agencies were being created quickened. This was in part because of efforts by grassroots organizations concerned about students’ safety on campus. For example, the <a href="http://clerycenter.org/">Clery Center for Security on Campus</a> engaged in major congressional lobbying to get policymakers to address campus crime. Public health researchers and feminists also lobbied Congress to address campus crime.</p>
<p>Subsequently, departments began appearing at all sorts of colleges and universities: two- and four-year, public and private, residential and commuter, rural and urban, sectarian and nonsectarian. </p>
<p>They also preferred hiring veteran officers who had completed police academy training because they could be put to work immediately. </p>
<p>Early campus police departments copied the <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/13639510310503541?journalCode=pijpsm">organizational characteristics</a> of their municipal counterparts. They adopted a top-down flow of communication, a hierarchical rank structure and specialized operations (eg, patrol officers and detectives; community relations personnel; crime prevention officers). </p>
<p>Patrol was organized into two or three daily shifts, 8–10 hours in length, that began with a “roll call.” Officers patrolled campus in cars clearly marked as police vehicles. They wore distinct uniforms and were equipped with weapons (including handguns), two-way radios, handcuffs, batons, etc.</p>
<p>They responded to calls for service via a centralized dispatch system that people (students, faculty members or staff) could call when they needed police services on campus. </p>
<h2>Maturation of campus police departments</h2>
<p>During the 1990s, still more departments were created. By <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cle0405.pdf">2004</a>, about 75% of four-year schools enrolling 2,500 or more students were served by officers with full arrest powers. Two thirds of the schools employed armed officers.</p>
<p>As these agencies came into their own during the 1990s, they implemented extensive <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cle0405.pdf">pre-employment screening</a> for prospective hires that included background investigations, checks of driving records, interviews with references, psychological screening, drug testing and so on. </p>
<p>They also were less inclined to hire veteran officers from other agencies, preferring instead to develop their own officers. </p>
<p>The 1990s also saw campus police agencies become fully embedded into the fabric of campus life. Beyond routine patrol, officers engaged in crime prevention activities, provided safety and security training for students and staff and self-defense training for women. They also engaged in other outreach activities. </p>
<p>Departments also shifted their patrol tactics and began relying more on bicycle, foot and, in some cases, mounted patrol. They altered their organizational philosophy away from one that stressed rapid response to calls for service, to one that emphasized proactive, <a href="http://www.ors.od.nih.gov/ser/dp/Community/Pages/Community-Policing-Philosophy.aspx">community-oriented policing</a>.</p>
<h2>A whole new set of issues</h2>
<p>Post-9/11, campus agencies developed formal cooperative agreements with city and county sheriffs’ departments, which included routine, joint training exercises. </p>
<p>Training for campus police officers expanded. Some agencies now <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cle0405.pdf">require</a> over 1,000 hours of academy and field training for officers. </p>
<p>And, since the early 2000s, campus police departments have not only grown in size, but also became more <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cle0405.pdf">diverse</a>, as more women and members of minority groups were hired.</p>
<p>Additionally, as illustrated by the Cincinnati case, campus officers now have jurisdiction beyond the campus boundaries and find themselves engaging in routine patrol in neighborhoods surrounding a specific college or university. At least one reason for this is that students live in these neighborhoods.</p>
<p>A recent Bureau of Justice Statistics <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cle1112.pdf">survey of campus police departments</a> revealed that during 2011-2012, nearly <em>90%</em> of campus police officers in the US had patrol and arrest jurisdiction off campus, which put these officers into direct contact with many more nonstudents and created a whole new set of issues, again tragically illustrated by the <a href="http://www.hcpros.org/tensing">Cincinnati incident</a>.</p>
<h2>What is the need for campus police?</h2>
<p>As the responsibilities of campus police officers extend beyond the “ivory tower” and into communities surrounding colleges and universities, they are more likely to encounter situations typically handled by municipal police officers including traffic stops, citizens with mental health issues and members of minority groups. </p>
<p>They will also encounter more potentially violent situations.</p>
<p>Of late, <a href="http://mashable.com/2015/07/30/body-cameras-officers-fatal-shootings/">body cameras</a> worn by campus officers are expected to address concerns about how they interact with citizens. Considering that Officer Tensing was wearing a body camera, I believe such an assumption is invalid. </p>
<p>Perhaps a more fundamental question that needs answering in light of the Cincinnati shooting is whether campus police officers <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/2227789/sam-dubose-campus-police-armed/">are even needed</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45538/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Sloan receives funding from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), and the National Science Foundation (NSF)..</span></em></p>Campus police have been in existence for only about 40 years or so. But they are taking on an ever bigger role.John J. Sloan III, Professor of Criminal Justice and Sociology , University of Alabama at BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.