Miss Jeffrey,
I was highly disappointed to see your article titled "Pruitt: 4 reported crimes untrue" headlining the front of [Monday's] Daily Gamecock.
While it may be true that the four specific incidents mentioned in the article turned out to be mistaken, the article was very misleading in that it focused on only those four incidents and mentioned the numerous actual crimes committed against students only glancingly on the second page or not at all.
There is undoubtedly a crime problem centered around the USC campus, and it is because of my own experience and not because of social media that I no longer feel as safe as I once did on my campus.
Several weeks ago, my roommate was robbed at gunpoint at 2:30 p.m. while coming home from class, right outside our apartment building in a student apartment complex across the street from the USC baseball stadium.
Less than a week later, another girl I have known since my freshman year was robbed on Greene Street while walking home with two of her friends. These are just a few of the recent crimes that I know to be true because someone connected to me personally was one of the victims.
As a junior, I have lived on or near this campus for over two years and have never before heard of a crime targeting someone connected to me personally, and I know many others can relate to that.
In addition, these are not students who are making risky decisions such as coming home by themselves late at night or staying in Five Points until 3 a.m.
These are responsible students making responsible decisions who had frightening crimes committed against them. To have their hardships downplayed on the front page of a newspaper that is supposedly their newspaper, a newspaper run by students for students, was extremely upsetting.
Although it may be true that the particular crimes mentioned turned out to be untrue, there are still far more reports that are true.
So why are we covering up the crime problem rather than dealing with it head on? Your article criticized social media outlets that "thrive on sensationalism," yet it sensationalized the idea that these four crimes were untrue, proclaiming it in a front page headline and calling the reports "stories" in bold print, while the important message of the article was buried further back on another page: "'Even if we have to go back in the end and say that didn't happen, that's OK,' Hickman said. 'We don't want people to feel like reporting things is bad if they aren't certain. It's better to err on the side of caution.'"
There is a crime problem on this campus. Students present easy targets for crime because they frequently carry valuables with them and are less likely than nonstudents to carry weapons of their own due to campus regulations.
Students should be on the alert and taking safety precautions, and they should never be afraid to report any suspicious circumstances. USCPD, CPD and the university need to be doing more to ensure the safety of our students and visitors to our campus, rather than attempting to cover up a problem and hide it from visiting parents.
Most importantly, however, students should be supporting each other no matter what. That includes the students who write for The Daily Gamecock.