Where are the emails on sexual misconduct?

Multiple times a week, Tufts students receive mass emails from one campus office or another, outlining policy changes, announcing important events and offering congratulatory remarks for student and faculty accomplishments. Last weekend, students received an email from the Office of the President informing the Tufts community of anti-Semitic graffiti on campus. This is not the only email announcement about crime on and around the Medford/Somerville campus that students have received, as the Tufts community is also emailed “Safety Alerts” from Tufts University Police (TUPD), which call attention to and warn students of crime and misconduct. These brief and informative emails notify the student body about how it should take precautions to protect itself from crimes such as robbery, theft and assault. While these emails raise important concerns, they also raise the question: How do administrators decide what exactly is going to be included in these email announcements? And, perhaps more importantly, how do they decide what is going to be left out?

Regardless of the decision-making process involved in the campus-wide distribution of pertinent news and updates, there are holes in the web of information that is delivered to the inboxes of undergraduates. While students are updated after a large number of unarmed robberies and property thefts, little or nothing is said about occasions of sexual misconduct on campus, or what is being done to prevent it.

And while instances of sexual misconduct are, inherently, a very different issue than those of robbery and theft, shouldn’t the Tufts student body be hearing more about something that, according to the Office of Equal Opportunity’s definition of sexual misconduct, affected 84 students in the 2013-2014 school year? Last semester the university garnered not only campus-wide, but nation-wide attention due to issues on compliance with Title IX, and, in response, a task force was assigned to address and amend the concerns with Tufts’ sexual assault policy. Shouldn’t students be updated on these presumably dynamic policy changes?

Transparency with crimes on Tufts University's campus and the surrounding area gives students awareness of the issues and the ability to protect themselves. In the same vein, students should be provided with information on sexual misconducts and on how the university is working to protect its students against an issue that it too often kept silent.