Compiled by Stephanie Eisemann, news staff
Crime of the Week: Sunday, Sept. 11
9:51 p.m.
A Northeastern University (NU) staff member reported a large knife and a puddle of blood in the first floor men's room of the Marino Center. Northeastern University Police Department...
At the end of last month, Baylor University found itself the latest school mired in a sexual assault scandal. Baylor had employed the law firm Pepper Hamilton to independently investigate the university’s alleged failings to implement Title IX and the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013. Both laws were written to help create a safe, non-discriminatory environment for women on college campuses, but Pepper Hamilton found that Baylor had failed to implement them.
When I was in elementary school, I had a wonderful friend named Lucy, who was and is a prolific jokester. We were hanging out in Lucy’s room one day, probably reading Seventeen magazine or watching “America’s Next Top Model,” when I noticed some wooden block letters on Lucy’s dresser that read “LUC.” I inquired about where the Y in her name was and why there wasn’t a block for that letter.
During Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we at The Huntington News want to make it known that the Northeastern University community is not isolated from crimes associated with sexual abuse. Below is a list of all incidents of sexual assault, battery and related cases reported to the Northeastern University Police Department (NUPD) since July 2014.
A line of shirts hung in both bright and muted colors, red next to white next to gray. A sign explained that this was called the Clothesline Project, where people who were victims of sexual violence could tell their stories or open a dialogue on sexual assault and rape. One statistic on a shirt read that one in four women and one in seven men are victims of sexual violence over the course of their life.
Crime of the week: Friday, April 1
2:19 a.m.
A general fire alarm for West Village A North sounded for a stairwell on the 13th floor. Northeastern University Police Department (NUPD) responded and reported a fire extinguisher was discharged with no signs of fire or smoke. Boston Fire Department (BFD) arrived at 2:24 a.m. Maintenance was notified to clean and ventilate the area. BFD authorized a reset of the alarm. A report was filed.
When Rolling Stone published the article “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA” in November of 2014, the gasps of its 2.7 million online readers were almost audible. As women, siblings, friends, parents, teachers and college students, we were...
Northeastern is one of 85 colleges and universities to be investigated by the United States Department of Education (DoE) for Title IX violations in the handling of sexual assault cases on campus. Other schools under investigation include Boston area Harvard College, Boston University and Emerson College, as well as other institutions such as the University of Virginia, all which have been at the forefront of the national conversation of sexual assault.
Amid a developing dialogue about sexual assault and a Title IX case filed against the university, Northeastern students have begun pushing the administration to redefine sexual assault in the Code of Student Conduct (CSC).Advocates for the change are hoping the university will provide more educational and supportive services for students while also creating clear guidelines for handling sexual assault and its various sanctions.
On Nov. 12, Northeastern held a campus day of action in the name of the Carrying the Weight Together movement that started over the summer by Columbia University senior Emma Sulkowicz.
Colleges across the nation are taking a red pen to their sexual assault policies, and in their revisions, placing new emphasis on bystanders as a powerful resource.
At Columbia University, a student is carrying a mattress from class to class. She will continue to carry a mattress like the one she was sexually assaulted on until her alleged rapist no longer attends the same school as her.
A Harvard student wrote an open letter in her school’s newspaper this year entitled “Dear Harvard: You Win,” telling her story of living in the same building as the man she said assaulted her, while the university failed to punish him.
