Along with the numerous Public Safety Alert emails you’ve been receiving lately, you may have noticed a message from GUSA about their “Campus Safety efforts.” If the text of the e-mail seems familiar, that’s because it’s copied-and-pasted from the GUSA Campus Safety Watch Facebook group President Pat Dowd created recently.
Since, as the message declares, “a ‘business as usual’ approach to campus safety is failing to meet the needs of our community,” GUSA is soliciting recommendations and promising to present them to whoever DPS Director Darryl Harrison’s successor is. As of 12:30 a.m., the Facebook group, though boasting 295 members, has only 5 wall posts and 1 discussion post. Dowd told me via email that he has received over 20 student responses in the six hours since the campus-wide e-mail was sent out.
The missive also encourages students to join the Facebook group, saying that “By joining this group, you are sending a clear message to the administration that campus security it [sic] a major concern for you as a Georgetown student.” Does joining a Facebook group really constitute active participation in campus life, though? Surely there are more substantive ways of conveying your concern about safety issues than clicking the “Join this Group” button.
The open meeting VP for Student Affairs Todd Olson and VP for University Safety Rocco DelMonaco held Tuesday evening was pretty sparsely attended, even for study days. There were approximately 50-60 audience members, about half of whom were faculty or staff members. “Where are all these ‘mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore’ students?” someone sitting near me asked.
There’s also an interesting side note for any avid GUSA followers out there: back in the presidential campaign, during the debate hosted by The Hoya, Dowd distinguished himself from the other candidates by arguing that campus safety was not GUSA’s purview – “Safety is not a GUSA issue,” Dowd said in the debate.
After the jump, Dowd explains why he’s mucking around in safety now, the adorable Brian Kesten makes an appearance, and Rocco DelMonaco needs GUSA like jam needs toast.
Until the events of this past weekend, LXR had been a relatively quite dorm this year, with few problems larger than the lack of hot water during my morning shower. This week, however, things have changed drastically as DPS officers make the rounds several times a day, banging on doors and handing out safety violation notices.
Residents now face door checks during which officers walk through the halls trying to open each door (similar to what Sunday morning’s intruder did), reprimanding those students who have their doors unlocked. One officer, who knocked, hesitated briefly, and then proceeded to open my unlocked door himself, told us that these demands have come from the “administration”.
I recognize the need for increased dorm security, but I don’t think that it should come at the expense of student privacy and peace of mind. The citation slips which have been left on numerous doors in LXR make me feel uncomfortable in my own home; I used to feel reasonably safe in LXR, but now I just feel constantly annoyed.If the administration wants to increase security in East Campus, I think they should, but they should not try to place the onus entirely on students by implementing these checks.
If I leave my door unlocked and someone steals my computer, that’s my fault, and I accept responsibility for it. But if an outsider manages slip into the building, I should not be held accountable for ineptitude of campus security.
I went down to the basement of Copley at 4:30 last night to get some snacks from the vending machine. For the first time at Georgetown, I feared for my safety as I walked through the halls of my dorm.
Strangely, the numerous burglaries in my dorm earlier in the year didn’t have the same effect. Maybe it was because of the late hour (similar to the times when the recent incidents took place in LXR), or perhaps it was because when I walked into the building a few minutes earlier, the security guard was fast asleep with her head between her arms, and didn’t even bother to look up when I swiped right in front of her.In that moment, I understood how the residents of LXR must feel.
Other people did too–I was relatively unsurprised to hear that an RA in the building was carrying a knife. Reports of more assaults in Village A and Henle are somehow no longer shocking. Is this past weekend to be a watershed for crime at Georgetown? Online comments on a recent Hoya article covering the LXR sexual assault suggest many things—mostly ridiculous, like calling for racial profiling, since all of the descriptions seem to be the same, of young dark-skinned males (if only everyone didn’t believe in race).
Beyond the unnecessary racial polarization of the issue, some users have suggested that DPS become a full-fledged police force. This newspaper’s position is well-documented on the issue of arming DPS, but anonymous users are calling for much more than that. They believe that Georgetown’s lack of a proper police force encourages crime, as a bubble where the security officers have no discretion or training to investigate crimes.Therefore, Georgetown will continue to attract crime as a target of opportunity.
Arming DPS further will apparently stop this.The real answer probably lies in more patrols, not more weapons. Rather than commit to upgrading DPS into an actual police department (unthinkable and unnecessary, with MPD just a phone call away), the university might want to begin by rethinking its patrolling policy.
According to another article in today’s Hoya, one security guard covers Village A, Alumni Square, LXR and Walsh. Allison Mead (SFS ‘10), a concerned student quoted for the story, raises an interesting question that is buried at the end of the article: “I have the emergency system. Why didn’t I get a text message to say, ‘Lock your doors; there is an intruder’?”
Perhaps because her door should have already been locked, but that’s beside the point: students should be able to feel safe inside their dorms, to not fear going to sleep in their own beds. Beyond that, there are so many issues here—involving fear, race, campus security (or lack thereof), the abilities, tactics and working conditions of DPS and Securitas (the security company notable for its sleeping guards)—that can’t really be solved with one showy strategy, or even just by urging everyone to lock their doors.
Many of the actions that have already been taken in LXR—replacing the GOcard reader, locking the emergency stairwell doors that permit anyone to bypass the guard desk—should have been done a long time ago. What to do next is the most difficult question; hopefully the debate won’t succumb to fear and choose costly and ineffective options.
As Doug Feith’s 2-year term at Georgetown expires, several questions remain. Was his ouster organized by liberal faculty members? What does Foreign Service Dean Galluci think of it all? Has anyone at Georgetown ever been so much a war criminal (besides Henry Kissinger, obvs.)?
For a few Georgetown students, however, one question looms above all: how can we use an online petition to save him? Save Professor Feith and the Diversity of Thought worries that Feith is the SFS’s killer app: “We do not want to lose a preeminent foreign policy scholar to another university and jeopardize our status as the nation’s preeminent government and foreign policy institution.”
The petition’s been signed 59 people. But how many who signed are really concerned with diversity of thought and not motivated by other, more sinister agendas? According to the site, notable signatories include
Henry Kissinger (Hard Knocks 2009)
Dorit Feith (Michigan ‘07). Daughter?
Feith Tortures. This signature was deleted, but it speaks to the petition’s persuasiveness if it could even win over that guy.
Can the internet, the medium which heaped so much ridicule on Feith, save his academic career? Probably not!
Irony and flash mobs collided in an unfortunate way two few weeks ago at the Jefferson Memorial when a small group of twenty-something libertarians decided to commemorate Jefferson’s 265th birthday. They celebrated the agrarian republic-lover by dancing silently (each equipped with their own iPhones or iPods) at his memorial at midnight on April 13.
The geekphoria was dashed when one of the faithful was told she couldn’t dance there, and then arrested for asking why not. One guy had a video camera and caught the whole process on tape–it’s troublesome, and not just because libertarians can’t dance.
In the video, no one is being disrespectful or disorderly. The monuments are open 24/7, and the libertarians planned to come out at night so as not to disrupt tourists yelling on their cell phones or rowdy school groups. As the officer leads the arrested woman out of the rotunda, the videographer asks him to “Read these walls, I mean, you’re the security guard for this memorial. Thomas Jefferson is looking down and he is very dissatisfied. This is not the America he wanted.”
Satisfying Thomas Jefferson’s whims, projected through an unflinching stone gaze, must be difficult. But while it’s troubling that the officers arrested someone for peacefully and quietly celebrating, it’ll be worse if they don’t withdraw the charges in court this Tuesday. Maybe the guard misunderstood what kinds of activities people could do at the monuments (which are technically public property), but they should be able to admit their mistake and not prosecute her further. There’s no reason why Washingtonians should be afraid to have gatherings/protests/birthday parties of any peaceful kind on monument ground when it’s well within their rights.
-Sara Carothers, Voices editor. Photo from Flickr user Subtleness.
Some commenters who read this post on the U.S. Attorney’s decision to drop charges against Philip Cooney (MSB ‘10) want more clarification about that decision and the reporting in my recent article on the subject, and I’m happy to oblige (sorry it took so long, but it is, after all, the last week of school). Keep in mind that this analysis is only based on my reporting on the case since last fall and a four month stint working at a legal magazine covering a variety of court cases, so nothing in here is gospel.
The U.S. Attorney’s office of the District of Columbia dropped all charges against Philip Cooney (MSB ‘10) relating to an assault that occurred last fall which attracted controversy on and off campus.
Cooney was charged with bias-related assault by the Metropolitan Police Department last September, but the U.S. Attorney reported that “subsequent investigation raised doubts as to … whether based upon available evidence we could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant in this case was the person who actually committed the assault.”
“Philip was always completely innocent of the charges against him and the dismissal of the case has vindicated him entirely,” Danny Onorato, Cooney’s lawyer, wrote in a statement. “To know Philip Cooney is to know a young man of exemplary character who was wrongfully accused in this case.”
The U.S. Attorney’s office has indicated that they continue to consider the assault, in which a male Georgetown student was beaten by an assailant who shouted anti-gay slurs, a criminal act. Cooney was originally implicated in the assault through a Facebook.com profile and, later, a police photo line-up. During the pre-trial period, the prosecuting Assistant U.S. Attorneys, Mary Dobbie and Joseph Spurber, determined that they would not be able to firmly establish that Cooney was present at the time of the assault.
Neither Cooney nor the spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office were available for comment. It is not clear at this time if any investigation into the assault will continue.
For the Voice’s comprehensive coverage of the case, click here. Check this blog and Thursday’s edition for more information on the dropped charges.
I’m not trying to kick up an alarmist sandstorm here, but if you’re one of the 6,137 undergrads who were notified that their social security numbers and/or other personal information may have been stolen as part of the heist of an external hard drive from the Office of Student Affairs, it’s probably worth trying to protect yourself. Though Georgetown’s campus-wide e-mail said no credit card information was stolen, your information could be used to take out lines of credit in your name (such as loans).
The first step is to put a 90-day fraud alert out with the 3 major credit bureaus; this will prevent new lines of credit from being taken out in your name without your first confirming them by phone. Call Equifax at 1-800-525-6285 to begin the alert; they’ll contact Experian and TransUnion (the other 2 bureaus) to make it universal.
Second, Visa’s fraud center told me that identity thieves and other bad guys will use your information to pose as you, call in, and find out your credit card info. Call your credit card company to place a password on your account, which is more secure than the typical “mother’s maiden name” question used to verify by default. Credit card companies are already diligent fraud monitors, so they’ll probably call anyway if a strange-looking charge appears on your account.
I don’t know the chances of your info being used to nefarious ends (who’s to say what they really are, anyway?), but there’s no harm in protecting yourself. It should only take 20 minutes or so (based on past experience), and will be a lot less painful than trying to deal with the repercussions should your info actually be used.
It’s particularly galling, in light of our recent editorial on the subject, to see D.C. police apparently discounting a rape allegation from an intoxicated woman. Even worse was their response to a local do-gooder who brought a female officer to the scene to try to get the victim some aid—they handcuffed him and roughed him up a little before sending him on his way. The incident took place in Adams Morgan, a night-life district frequented by Georgetown students. The police district in question is investigating what happened that night, so we’ll see if any of the officers involved receive reprimands. Oh, and the police involved were part of Chief Cathy Lanier’s “All Hands on Deck” Intiative, which is supposed to “improve community policing.”
Marshak was caught drawing the swastikas by a camera set up in her hallway. Things aren’t going to go well for her now, it seems. The Hatchet reports she’ll probably be expelled. The FBI got involved in her case when they thought it was real, and they won’t be pleased. She says she only drew a few of the swastikas and was just trying to make GW pay attention to the first real swastika she says was drawn on her door.
Marshak was a reporter for the Hatchet, which you’ll notice they don’t mention in the latest article now that she’s disgraced. I guess they enjoyed the easy access to a hate crime victim as long as she was reputable.
Also, why are swastikas the fake hate crime of choice for attention-seekers?
-Will Sommer, blog editor
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, Georgetown University's preeminent newsmagazine since 1969. The opinions expressed in Vox Populi are those of their authors unless specifically stated.
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