SMU officials have significantly strengthened their policies and actions in notifying the community when students report being sexually assaulted.

At the end of the fall semester, officials abandoned their old policy of not issuing crime alerts when acquaintance rapes or off-campus sexual assaults occurred.

Now, under the new policy, officials evaluate each crime on a case-by-case basis. On Dec. 8, officials issued the first crime alert under the revised policy. The alert said a student reported being raped by a man at his off-campus residence whom she had met at Jack’s Pub.

The new policy, instituted in December, has had obvious results.

Over the past four months, SMU issued seven crime alerts including two sexual assaults that occurred off-campus; one was an acquaintance rape. By comparison, SMU issued nine alerts over the previous 23 months.

Several SMU students said the change was long overdue.

“From the beginning, some form of communication [about these crimes] should have happened,” said Annie Baria, a first-year majoring in cinema-TV. “As students we have the right to know what’s happening with our peers.”

Today, Baria said she and her friends feel more informed about the crimes affecting the campus.

“Awareness makes people feel safer, because when they know what’s going on they know what to expect,” she said.

SMU officials said they made the change to ensure students are fully informed when a violent crime is reported.

“There has been a change,” said Bill Detwiler, SMU associate vice president of human resources and business services. “I think that with the crime alerts we were taking too narrow a view. What we were missing was an opportunity to have a learning/teaching moment on campus.”

The new policy represents a dramatic change.

Between 2001 and 2003, police reports show at least five female students at SMU said they were sexually assaulted on campus. Police never issued crime alerts for four of the assaults. Police said they did not issue an alert because each one was an acquaintance rape.

The Daily Campus reported this information in November. The campus newspaper also reported that in April 2004 an SMU student told police she was raped in her off-campus apartment near the university. Police issued no crime alert.

According to the federal Clery Act, universities are required to issue alerts when crimes occur “considered by the institution to represent a threat to students and employees.” It is named in memory of Jeanne Ann Clery, a freshman at Lehigh University who was raped and murdered while asleep in her residence hall on April 5, 1986.

In a 2004 interview, Snellgrove said he did not believe the acquaintance rapes posed a threat to the community because the suspect was known.

Snellgrove also said police did not issue a crime alert following the rape reported off campus because the crime was outside their jurisdiction.

Soon after the articles appeared, several SMU officials met to evaluate the crime alert process.

One concern at that meeting was that students were unaware of the dangers outside the boundaries of SMU.

“We knew that sexual assaults were happening off campus and our challenge was to figure out how we were going to alert students, but not totally frighten them,” said Cathey Soutter, a psychologist at SMU who often counsels student rape victims. “So many of these incidents that occur off campus really do affect the SMU community, whether they live on campus or commute to campus. Therefore, we felt it was important to do something.”

Officials then formed a committee to strengthen the crime alert policy. The panel included Detwiler, Snellgrove and Soutter.

Today, when the university is notified of a serious offense, a committee convenes to evaluate the nature of the crime. Officials try to make a decision quickly since the Clery Act requires that alerts must be issued within two business days of the crime.

Snellgrove feels the revised policy better reflects the spirit of the Clery Act.

“This helps bring in other people in the institution and it’s more representative of the university,” he said.

First-year Lauren Powell said the new policy will help open the eyes and ears of students who believe a violent crime could never happen to them.

“Many people here do not realize that their friend, classmate or neighbor could be a potential threat. So the more times they see an alert, the more aware they can be,” said Powell, who is majoring in biology and Spanish. “As long as the police attempt to spread the news of all types of rape then they are doing a good job.”

Soutter said she worried that drafting a new policy might infringe on the victim’s privacy. But she’s convinced the new approach protects that right while also emphasizing the importance of informing and educating the campus community.

“We needed to take a step forward and acknowledge when assaults are occurring off campus so that students can be able to better protect themselves and to be proactive in taking care of their safety,” she said.