INDIANAPOLIS — Several students at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis are telling campus leaders to make changes after a sexual assault was recently reported.
Roughly 50 students rallied in the rain to share their demands Wednesday.
They want IUPUI to add cameras in campus buildings. The students said no cameras are in the halls or the stairwell of the residence hall where the assault is said to have happened.
Freshman Noah Thomas said he was disturbed when he got the alert letting him know someone had been sexually assaulted in his dorm. However, he said, not every student was made aware, and he’s working to make sure such information doesn’t slip through the cracks again.
“We didn’t realize we had to sign up to get notified about crimes around the campus. People are still living here today and don’t know what happened,” said Thomas.
He teamed up with his classmate, Caeley Hayes, to peacefully protest. The pair also wants IUPUI to add a universal alert system that goes to everyone, regardless if they sign up for it.
“We realized there’s so much on campus that we haven’t heard about yet and we just want to raise awareness to that,” Hayes said.
Some of the students at the protest traveled from other campuses to show support.
“We have people here from other schools. Ball State is one of them because this is the message because people care and this would be every campus, every campus would care about this situation,” Thomas said.
The university responded to the students with a statement:
Any instance of sexual assault on our campus is one too many. We appreciate our students calling attention to these most recent incidents. We constantly review our safety measures and are examining what policies and equipment, including some that the students are calling for, would make the most difference. We do want to make sure all IUPUI students are aware of the numerous resources now available through our sexual assault prevention, intervention, and response task force at https://sapir.iupui.edu/
“That’s our goal, is to work with the university together to make the campus feel safer, that’s our number one goal, it’s to not bash the university. I’m proud to be an IUPUI Jaguar, I love it here, but when you love something, sometimes things need to change for you to love it even more,” said Thomas.
Campus police say the investigation into the recent sexual assault report is not completed; they have identified a suspect, but no one is in custody.
