Firing of a College President

Click on the title for the article I'm referencing.

I've followed this story for a few weeks now, and sadly, I suspect that the only thing we'll hear about this in the future is the inevitable lawsuit.

The back story is that in December, an Eastern Michigan University student was found dead in her dorm room. The University officials assured the parents of the young woman that there was no evidence of foul play - and they told the university community that there was no threat to the members of the community. Several weeks later, when a man was arrested and charged with the young woman's rape and murder, the university said essentially Oops, our bad.

In fact, the woman was found naked from the waist down, with semen on her body. Also, she had, in accordance with media reports, been pretty obviously smothered/strangled to death.

I have read that the parents accepted the university's explanation because the young woman had a pre-existing medical condition that could be fatal - and they assumed that this is what had happened.

Adding to the "oops" factor - apparently, police reports taken by campus police were ordered to be shredded so that the media might not get hold of them and report the actual situation.

For those of you unfamiliar, there is federal legislation called The Cleary Act which requires university campuses to report in a timely manner crimes that occur on a campus as well as alert the campus community to possible threats. Clearly, EMU failed failed failed in this task.

I can only imagine that the university either was more concerned about their own crime/safety reputation or found the details of this crime so distasteful that they erroneously decided that no one need know.

If the first is true - then they are in need of serious overhaul and oversight to correct this notion. Frankly, I think that parents would be more concerned about the university's attempts to cover up crime than any efforts the university puts into preventing crime. If the second, then someone needs to, as the locals say, bring a few administrators to jesus.

Rape is a fact of life for a huge portion of our population. Women are "trained" from an early age to fear the possibility of rape - and are taught an elaborate "dance" of behaviors designed to lessen their attractiveness to would-be attackers. More and more, we are seeing male victims of not just child hood sexual abuse - but also assaults by their peers. If administrators of a university find rape too distasteful to discuss publicly, perhaps they should build themselves a bubble and climb in. Pretending it doesn't happen doesn't make it go away.