After six weeks of nerve-shredding night-time walks through parking lots, of clenching un-capped Mace cans returning home the library, of after-midnight calls to sleeping friends for a safe walk home: after all this, it turns out that students are safer than we thought.
In a Thursday letter given out to parents on Parent’s Weekend, Vice President for Student Affairs Dennis Pruitt revealed that four of the most publicized crimes at USC this semester were “stories.”
Pruitt wrote, “After thorough investigation by the USC and Columbia police departments, we have discovered that there was no robbery on the Horseshoe. There was no gunman behind the Russell House. There was no assault on the train tracks behind the Greek Village. There was no robbery at Main and Whaley streets.”
We quote this information in full because you still might not know it. It wasn’t sent out to the student body until two day after it was distributed to parents registered for Parents Weekend activities.
According to Chief Communication Officer, Wes Hickman, USC felt confident that these four individual crimes could be reported false sometime last week. Each crime reached a point, at around the same time two or three day time-frame, that the university felt safe calling them "stories."
The first people to get this information were parents visiting USC campus. Parents who weren't there have yet to get any word of this whatsoever. We understand that parents had questions coming onto campus, but students have had questions for weeks.
What we fail to understand is why this information took this long to be sent to students. While this information was sent out Sunday night in a weekly email, we feel that this information should have been sent out as soon as the incidents could be reported false. There was no need to package the incidents up into one report — it would have put students far more at ease had we known each incident was false as soon as the university did.
Just as students need to know about potential crimes on campus as they are called in, we also need to know if these reports are "stories" just as urgently. Presenting the information to all students at once during a scheduled email is understandable, but we feel that this information could have stood on its own due to its urgency.
The way crimes are interpreted and presented by the administration affects the soical environment in which the student body operates. USC has been buffeted week after week with stories of students being robbed, threatened with firearms and put into situations of extreme danger.
If it turns out that a large part of these reports aren't true, then that has a measurable impact on the lives of students. It means that they can walk the streets with precautions but without fear of imminent danger. It means that that "come escort me" phone call to a sleeping friend might not be necessary.
It means that, while safety is foremost in our thoughts, fear isn't. And we have the right to know that.