Over the last week, The Daily Gamecock has reported on a string of crimes at student apartment complexes like the Retreat, Stadium Suites and the Village. Three teenagers were charged with several crimes following the final incident, the abduction of former USC student Jordan Dinsmore.
Since areas where most residents are students were the target of these crimes, students are necessarily at higher risk of being victimized. With that in mind, the staff of The Daily Gamecock has one question: Why didn’t we know about this before Miss Dinsmore started talking about her story on social media?
It’s hard to place primary responsibility for keeping us in the dark on any one part of the chain of communication. All we know is this: The university was either unaware of the string of crimes, or they did not feel it was incumbent on them to notify students. As USC students, we do not believe either case is acceptable.
In the first situation, the people who did know there was a string of connected crimes taking place at student apartment complexes didn’t think that it was worth informing the university that their students were at risk. While we understand that due to the way law enforcement is structured, communication between jurisdictions may be difficult to coordinate, when student safety is at risk the way it was in this situation, we think it is vitally important that those difficulties be overcome. It may not be the current policy of the sheriff’s department to inform the university of incidents where students have been targeted, particularly given that the crimes occurred off-campus.
The second situation refers to just this problem. Carolina Alert only notifies students of crimes committed on campus. Thus, even if information about an off-campus serial crime were received, the university might or might not choose to consider it their business to tell us. We believe that if students are at a higher risk of being victimized in a certain string of serial crimes, it is our right to know that so that we can better protect ourselves — regardless of whether the crime happened off-campus.
In either instance, we believe that somewhere along the line, there was a system failure that needs to be examined. Although living complexes like the Retreat are not on-campus and therefore may not appear to be the obvious responsibility of the university, quibbling about jurisdiction in this case muddies the point: Students are at higher risk because of the pattern of crime, and we need to know about it.
If residential areas that advertise on campus to students, market themselves as student living and are primarily occupied by students are at risk, the fact that they’re off-campus should not be a stopping point in the chain of communication. In fact, any time students are being specifically targeted — whether that’s in a student living development or in Five Points — we need to work out a way to pass the news along, without waiting for the next Jordan Dinsmore.
Whether it comes in the form of a Carolina Alert or in some sort of further-reaching alert system, we shouldn’t have to rely on social media to tell us when and where we are at risk.
The Daily Gamecock believes that regardless of why we weren’t told this time, the university and the police need to put their heads together and figure out how to tell us next time.