Dive Summary:
- Campus safety and student affairs officials discussed stalking Friday at a one-day conference celebrating the Clery Center for Security on Campus' 25th anniversary, and Gary J. Margolis, a former campus police chief at the University of Vermont, said the issue should be higher on everyone's list of priorities.
- Social media is a big part of what a stalked college student must deal with these days, and one official said she never even receives reports of physical stalking anymore--only digital.
- Since many specific acts perpetrated by stalkers aren't necessarily illegal and state statutes on the matter vary, Margolis said he would like to see more officers trained to investigate what fear looks like and where it could be originating.
From the article:
WASHINGTON - In 2005, a female college student filed a report with the campus police saying she was being stalked. The department's only investigator left the next day for six months of post-surgery leave, and the case fell through the cracks. When the investigator returned to work, she checked in on the status of the student. After moving four times to escape her stalker, who would post her address in Craigslist ads soliciting oral sex, she withdrew with only a term left to graduation. Terrible as that story (from an unnamed institution) is, shared here by one of a few dozen campus safety officials and student affairs professionals at an event Friday, it could have been far worse. ...