On April 16, I returned to my apartment in the Apartment Village at about 4 p.m. It was sunny and 75 degrees and I was loving the fact that I was done with class for the day. Finding myself to be the first of my four roommates to arrive home, I proceeded into my bedroom where I started to send some e-mails.

Ten minutes later, I looked up to find a man standing at my bedroom door. I remember thinking to myself, “I am about to be raped.”

Luckily, after a short confrontation, the intruder left without hurting me or taking anything, but as I would soon find out, other Butler students were not so lucky.

I know that as a reader it’s very easy to think, “Why didn’t she just lock her door? Everyone knows to lock the door when you’re home alone!” But honestly -- how many people would really lock the door behind them in the middle of the day when they are expecting three roommates to be arriving home any minute? Not to mention, the door to the building requires an ID for entry, and neighbors were home all around me.

Less than an hour after the incident, the man from my bedroom along with his accomplice were arrested, but after talking to fellow students I quickly discovered that unwanted appearances by men with the exact same description as these two had been reported on campus as early as April 14.

My question then is, whether they were the same men or not (and it sure sounds like they were), why wasn’t I notified two days earlier? Don’t you think if I knew that these guys were out there, I would have locked my door? Maybe it’s supposed to be common knowledge to lock your door, and I understand that now, but what harm would there have been in alerting the entire campus the instant that the first incident was reported. The rest of the occurrences could have easily been prevented, or at least the attempt could have been made. A campus e-mail after the arrest does absolutely no good.

When Interim Police Chief Andy Ryan was asked by "Dawgnet" news editor Sarah Arntz why the Butler community was not notified sooner (before the arrests), Ryan said, “When we made the arrest on Wednesday, we didn’t necessarily know that these guys had potentially been in these other resident halls.”

I’m not sure what that means, but I am sure that whatever policy Butler uses to decide when they should and should not inform students about a crime on campus, did not help me out at all.

Similarly, according to Arntz’s report, on the day of the arrests BUPD received numerous calls about suspicious males around campus. If BUPD was given so much notification, why was my first notice a man standing in my bedroom doorway? Thanks, BUPD.

What’s even more interesting to me is that the week before, the Butler community was asked to fill out some information in order for Butler to activate an “emergency alert system” via cell phones. I recall receiving a “test” phone call from the system early in the week. It worked just fine. So why, then, was this system not put to use?

I understand the system is likely intended for very serious instances, similar to mass-shootings like Virgina Tech’s, but the situation at hand could have gone way worse than it did. Authorities had no way of knowing what in fact these men’s intentions were, if weapons were possessed and where the incident might lead. If there was reason to believe that it was not threatening enough to use the phone system, a mass e-mail could have been sent.

This experience linked me back to one that happened about a month ago, maybe longer, I can’t remember. One morning, Apartment Village residences received an e-mail notifying us that, the night before, a “wanted person” ran through the Village in an attempt to escape from police. That same night I walked by myself to the HRC for an evening workout. Had I known there was this person on the loose, I might have reconsidered my plan. So why couldn’t students be notified as soon as authorities were? At least that way, those who checked their e-mail would have known that it was not a good time to be out. What good does the e-mail do the following morning? And why didn’t my friends who are not Apartment Village residents ever hear about the incident? Didn’t they have a right to know too?

After my three years at Butler, I am beginning to see that image is everything. I truly believe sometimes that the school (and I am not blaming one person or a group of people because I do not know who to blame) is more concerned with appearing to be a safe and nearly perfect institution, than with providing students with the information they need to be safe. I think that Butler cares too much about what prospective students and parents will think if word gets out about instances like these, and does not care enough about the well-being of current students.

But I guess why should they? They’ve already got our money. Now, before I get an e-mail from Butler’s public relations representative, I want to ensure that my message is being taken how I intend it to be. I’m not condemning the whole system. I’m grateful that BUPD acted quickly after I reported the incident and I was very pleased to see that they caught the men. I just feel like the whole thing was kept a secret until it was too late.

Butler needs to take advantage of the fact that it has a listserv, and now a cell phone alert system available. The entire Butler community is just a click or a phone call away. Why not utilize that instead of pretending that everything is fine? Crime happens everywhere. Let’s not be ashamed of it. Let’s do the best we can to prevent it. For more information on campus security, or to help secure a passage for the requirement of campus warnings to be issued in 30 minutes or less, visit http://www.securityoncampus.org.

---

Related article:

"As the school year winds down, crime goes up"