In recent light of everything happening in Hollywood, it’s hard to imagine that accusations of sexual assault and harassment could be happening in our own town. Unfortunately, these happen in our town of Bloomsburg, even on our campus. Yet these assaults aren’t always reported. When they are reported, everyone gets text messages and emails letting us know that a sexual assault occurred. Have you ever actually looked at these messages though, Bloomsburg? Do you ever think they’re slightly vague? Maybe this is because the report was made very vague since the victim was scared to the point that giving any extreme detail could make matters worse. But maybe these messages are also vague because of who is distributing them. We think it’s safe to say that the vagueness in the messages aren’t helping very much. People around campus are already pretty cautious to make sure not to walk alone at night since a lot of these accounts have happened on campus. But how are we supposed to know if it’s safe? We don’t get an exact location in some of these messages, or if we do there doesn’t seem to be any details on the person who committed the assault.

      One of the biggest issues surfacing the waters is the fact that the Clery timely warnings are inefficient and not helpful to students. These timely warnings are released when a crime occurs that a Bloomsburg student reports to the police. These are distributed by email and text messages.

    However, many times we will receive a message about a crime or assault that occurred days or even a week ago. We as a college campus should do our best to make it as easy as possible to report a sexual assault without fear. The faster these affected people report to the police after the incident, the more awareness we have as a campus.

     If a sexual assault occurs, it is extremely important to report it. People are starting to use their voice more and make it known that these assaults are real and that they happen everywhere. We need to continue to use our voices to show that we are strong and that we will no longer tolerate silence. And with these message alerts, Bloomsburg should start including more details about these reports or make them known sooner rather than giving us a bare minimum message. If they want us to be safe, we need to know more about what is going on around our campus and around the town we live in for more than half of the year, not from hearing it in our classrooms or finding out on social media, which can happen too often.

     Sexual harassment, assault/rape has become such a serious topic and it has become more common to hear that someone has been through a trauma like that. It’s common for people not to report it when they’re afraid people won’t believe their story or because it was years ago so it’s not relevant anymore. The problem with that is that sexual assault will always be relevant. Whether it’s happened to you, someone you know or someone you don’t know… it happens. This stays with a person forever and affects them every day for the rest of their lives. We at The Voice believe that to say sexual assault won’t be relevant is the wrong mindset to have in our current times. So whether or not it happened yesterday or two years ago, get your story out there and let your voice be heard. It’s never too late to show that this is an ongoing problem in the world and to set people straight.

~ The Voice