Police should log rapes, some argue

While University Police maintain an official policy of not logging crimes of a personal nature -- rapes and attempted suicides, for example -- in the department's public incident journal, several members of the Penn community have voiced their concern about this procedure. According to state law, University Police are not required to log crimes that do not affect the general Penn community in its incident journal, Director Police Operations Maureen Rush said Wednesday. This journal is the only publicly available record of crimes and incidents responded to and documented by University police. According to Rush, incidents such as rapes and attempted suicides are not logged in the journal due to the need for confidentiality. She said that rape victims who come to the department's Victim Support and Special Services have the choice either to keep the matter quiet or report it to the Philadelphia Police. If the victim chooses to report to Philadelphia authorities, the incident is documented by the Philadelphia Police department, she said. Otherwise, it will go unrecorded for public access. Penn Women's Center Associate Director Gloria Gay said she feels it is very important that an official report of rapes is filed. "You don't have to report a person's name to record that the incident happened," she said. And a March 1995 report issued under the College and University Security Information Act states that "the University will, as appropriate, inform members of the Penn community when [a sex offense] has been so reported." College senior Marco Lentini, a member of Students Together Against Acquaintance Rape said the wording of this act could be ambiguous. "The interesting part is what they consider 'as appropriate'," he said. And College senior and STAAR member Jane Grodnick said she feels the public has a right to know what sex offenses occur on campus. "I think it's really horrible that [rapes] aren't logged because it really changes people's perception of the situation," she said. "Anonymity is justified, but crimes shouldn't be eliminated from the records." Grodnick added that she feels the low number of rapes reported statistically makes people who have been raped not come forward because "they think they're the only one it has happened to." According to Director of Health Education Susan Villari, the majority of the rapes that occur on campus probably are not even reported to Victim Support. "Statistics are traditionally misleading that way," she said. Current STAAR advisor and health educator Kurt Conklin said a National Institute of Mental Health survey revealed incidents of rape on college campuses are far greater than reported. "Statistics really don't tell the whole story," he said. Conklin said that studies have shown that one out of every four college women have either been raped or have been involved in an attempted rape.