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A recent spate of security infringements on campus has got HOOKED thinking how safe we really are. We decided to put our investigative journalism skills to the test and sought to find out what really happened during one of the peeping tom incidents and to ask the pertinent question of what has been done.
A female NUS student,
Alice, was the victim of a peeping tom incident at the MPSH5 toilet last month.
She was changing alone
in the toilet for a game of badminton at about 1 p.m.on August 27, when she heard noises, raised her head
and saw the voyeur’s head over the cubicle partition wall.
She was so startled
that she did not even scream. Leaving the toilet immediately, she dialed for
her friend whom she was supposed to play badminton with but the call went
unanswered. She then asked help from nearby toilet cleaners but they could not
understand what she wanted. Fortunately, she happened to notice a campus
security sign outside the toilet and called the number for help.
All throughout, the man
remained in the toilet. He walked out, overheard her giving descriptions to the
campus security personnel and started to run. She gave chase but lost him after
a flight of stairs.
By then, her friend had
received her hastily typed SMS and come to look for her. They spotted the man
at the carpark walking in the rain with an umbrella and confronted him
together. He walked away feigning ignorance, but they persisted in following
him until he lost patience and called them “stalkers” and yelled at them to
“stop following [him]”.
He then managed to hail
a cab but the two girls prevented the cab from leaving by holding its front
door open and explaining to the driver what had happened. At this, the man grew
agitated and thrust his umbrella at them to make them close the door. It was
only at the polite request of the cab driver that he had no choice but to get
out of the vehicle. Campus security arrived shortly after and handed him over
to the police, who later identified him to be an NUS student himself.
This is the third reported case of outrage of modesty on
campus in the past eight months. In June this year, a student was raped at
Clementi Park, and just this month alone, another student was molested on an
internal shuttle bus. Both victims were female and Campus Security has
confirmed that there has been no report of sexually harassed males so far.
Isabel Ng, Management
Assistant Officer of the Office of Estate & Development, explained
that, “Because NUS is an open
concept University, anyone can walk into our campus. We take measures to
enhance campus safety by restricting unauthorized access into premise, active
surveillance and instilling a sense of security consciousness amongst members
of the campus community.”
In NUS, not only are security officers deployed to patrol
the campus premises 24/7, closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras
and Emergency Call Points are also installed at various locations campus-wide
to facilitate SOS communication between distressed students and
officers at the Security Command Centre.
Alice made a plausible suggestion that Campus Security
should put callers through to the actual officers who would be driving over to
the crime scene. This was due to the communication lapse she experienced while
her friend and her were chasing the voyeur. She had to convey their changing
location to the phone operator in order to have the information relayed to the
officers in the car, resulting in a time lag and much hassle.
“This incident has traumatized me greatly,” Alice said,
“Now, I have to check public toilets carefully when I use them. It makes me
feel extremely unsafe visiting toilets alone.”
There is so much a school can do for its students who should
by now already have been familiarized with cautionary warnings against taking
short cuts and traveling alone at night. While these incidents can sometimes be
unpredictable and difficult to prevent, many other instances are not, if the
victims had only been more careful in protecting themselves from becoming a
target for sexual harassers.
NUS campus can feel very safe and people on campus harmless
enough. Most times, this is true, but be a little more discerning and wary of
suspicious characters and potentially dangerous places. The fact is that crimes
of this nature do happen here on campus, and one does not need to fall prey to
it to learn his/her lesson the traumatizing way. Hooked
*Victim’s name has been changed to protect her identity.
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Written by Guest on 2008-10-02 15:09:54
       | Written by Guest on 2008-10-05 15:19:16
1) The clementi park rape incident should not be counted as an "in campus" incident. The park is under the purview of NParks and the town planning. It is not within the area of surveillance of Campus Security. incorrect reporting.
2) The phone operator system is implemented so as to make things more efficient. For example, the phone operator will have knowledge of where each patrol is dispatched at, and thus signal out to the patrol nearest to the crime scene. A secondary reason for phone operator is because there is a need to prioritize security issues. This is the same reason why the operator system is used in the police force. Perhaps what can be implemented is for the phone operator to connect the caller directly to the nearest campus security so as to facilitate communications. Moreover, Alice apparently wasted a lot of time trying to call her friend and talking to the toilet cleaners. Maybe we can suggest from here to give out contact cards for campus security, for students to keep in their wallets. | This is not journalism
Written by Guest on 2008-10-06 12:54:56
Please do not call this piece investigative reporting. You have chosen to use anonymous sources which have broken the tenet of news reporting. | Written by Guest on 2008-10-16 11:04:38
If you were the victim, would you have been willing to let your name be published in a publication that's sent to to every NUS student's inbox?
Because I wouldn't, and can understand if 'Alice' didn't want to either. | Good piece, keep it up!
Written by Guest on 2008-11-11 08:18:54
I really appreciate knowing what happened in this recent incident. I agree the journalist is right in not publishing names, I wouldn't want to read it and I just want to know the truth so we can protect ourselves. Cheers to the journalist, you should have a pat on your back! |
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