This email was sent to all ASU students, faculty, and staff and outlines ASU’s commitment to address sexual abuse prevention.
From: Michael Crow <Michael.Crow@asu.edu>
Date: Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 10:00 AM
Subject: Sexual Abuse PreventionDear Members of the ASU Community:
Sexual misconduct, including sexual violence, is a national problem, and college and university campuses certainly have not been immune. National surveys report that one in five undergraduate women and one in sixteen undergraduate men experience attempted or completed sexual assault while in college. Such violence has a profound impact on a victim’s academic, social, and personal life, and negatively affects the experiences of their friends and families, other students, and all members of the university community.
Arizona State University is committed to combatting this complex social problem and strives to foster a positive learning, working and living environment that promotes every individual’s ability to participate fully in the ASU experience without fear of sexual violence, or even sexual harassment. Through university policies, awareness efforts, education and training programs, and advocacy, every member of the ASU community should be prepared to actively contribute to a culture of respect and keep our community free from sexual violence, harassment, exploitation and intimidation.
Cases involving allegations of sexual misconduct that are reported at ASU are fully investigated in accordance with the Arizona Board of Regents Student Code of Conduct. ASU provides victims with resources that let them know they are not alone, including guidance on finding a safe place, filing a police report, talking with counselors and seeking medical care. This fall, more than 4,000 students are participating in training to raise awareness about sexual violence prevention and bystander intervention. Additionally, all ASU students will be completing Consent and Respect, an online educational module designed to enhance awareness of sexual violence and its impact on college students, and to provide critical information on what to do if you or someone you know experiences sexual violence. Expanded sexual assault prevention training and education will also be provided to all faculty and staff. Information on how to report an incident, university policies and procedures can be found at a new web portal that provides a comprehensive list of campus resources dedicated to combatting sexual violence.
In order to ensure that our current policies, practices, programs, and support services foster an environment in which all community members have the opportunity to thrive, I have established a task force to review our current efforts related to sexual violence prevention. The task force will review our current policies and practices, strengthen our education and awareness efforts, enhance existing and forge new partnerships with key organizations and agencies, and review and recommend support services and resources for victims of sexual misconduct.
Specifically, the task force will:
- Review current reporting and adjudication processes and procedures and make recommendations for change or improvement;
- Review current support services and recommend opportunities to provide maximum support to community members who experience sexual violence;
- Recommend ways to increase overall awareness within the campus community on issues of sexual violence, community standards, and campus resources;
- Identify ways to enhance the effectiveness of our educational efforts regarding sexual assault prevention and bystander education;
- Recommend ways for members of the community to engage in educational activities towards building a culture that fosters prevention;
- Examine the role of alcohol and drugs in relation to issues of sexual violence and make recommendations for policy, education, and outreach; and
- Identify how the institution should best evaluate the effectiveness of our efforts.
The task force will be co-chaired by Marlene Tromp, vice provost & dean, New College of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, and Jennifer Hightower, deputy vice president for Student Services. The task force will seek input broadly from students, faculty, administrators, law enforcement and subject matter experts, and I have asked the co-chairs to move expeditiously so that we may have the opportunity to make improvements and modifications to our efforts to prevent sexual violence during the 2014-15 academic year.
As the new academic year gets under way, we all must strive to build a culture of respect in which every member of the Sun Devil family feels free from the threat of sexual violence.
Sincerely,
Michael M. Crow
This email uses lots of broad, empty language to discuss ASU’s “plan” to deal with sexual abuse/sexual assault, in order to prevent a repeat of last years sex assault explosion. Noticeably absent is the direct inclusion of ASU’s own police department in ANY stage of the planning or implementation process, save for the tidbit where the university will assist a victim of sexual abuse or assault with filing a police department (whether or not your criminal complaint will be handled appropriately by ASUPD is an entirely separate discussion).
Preventing sexual abuse/assault starts with notifying students about incidents that occur on campus in accordance with the Clery Act. ASUPD has shown it is unable to correctly report its crime statistics under the Clery Act by reclassifying sex offenses, or by completely omitting sexual assault statistics from Clery due to ASUPD’s inability to analyze crime reports.
Many of Crow’s suggestions have broad implications for ASUPD, but with staffing hitting a critical low, President Crow completely ignores the fact that his police department can’t even fulfill its basic functions, yet alone proactively engage with the community on issues pertaining to sexual violence. The “broad input” Crow seeks from law enforcement is nothing more than a fancy buzzword used by Crow to look like he cares about what the police department’s perception of the situation is.
Bottom line, Crow: If you are really concerned about curtailing sex abuse and sex assaults on campus, you need to invest the time and money into building and retaining a solid campus police force.
As Michael Crow talks a big talk he contributes to the public relations campaign while fully knowing our tiny police department can barely keep pace with the slow summer traffic.
If these people (Michael Crow and others) spent half the time on the police department that they spend on media fluff we would be where we need to be in order to protect the university.
More hot air coming out of a bloated politician doesn’t get results. So far that’s all Crow’s office and ASUPD leadership have been able to deliver. Hot air doesn’t keep crime down, doesn’t save lives, police officers do that.
Get ready for more hot air, empty promises, from scoundrels who can’t do business with a handshake and their word. It’s amazing what can be entrusted to whom.
They are getting federally investigated, investigated by the media, sued by victims, and this is nothing new, it’s been going on for many years. All of a sudden they want to appear to be doing something about it without fixing any of the issues with the pint sized broken down police department left in ruin after 14 years of John Pickens and his flunkies turning it into a quagmire.
Only a complete sociopathic asshole would know about problems that affect so many people so horribly and choose to do nothing about it, especially when they have the power and responsibility to do something about it.
The ASU public relations machine better be ready for the rest of 2014 with it’s continually mismanaged and understaffed police department. I don’t know what it takes to get through Michael Crow’s thick stubborn pompous head, but maybe employees need to reach out to the governor’s office, the state senate, author some legislation to get more state control over the tax and spend liberals running this university without conscience or consequence.
President Michael Crow and the university continue to boast about having a total student population of 80,000. However, there is nothing to boast about when your police department struggles every day to minimally staff its four campuses.
President Crow and Dr. Morgan Olsen continue to jeopardize the safety and security of the students, faculty, staff and visitors by not having the optimal number of sworn officers, on all four campuses, in accordance with the Department of Justice recommendation of 2.1 sworn officers per every 1,000 students at public universities.
As Michael Crow continues to ignore the issues with “his” police department the digging will continue and the truth is going to paint an ugly picture of his own mismanagement.
At the end of the day he is in charge of the Arizona State University Police Department even more than the chief and the egg of liability will be on his face.
Quick, get another photo op, press release, brochure, web page, or Facebook post out. We need to look busy, like we care. Without a long term plan and functional police department to carry it out this cycle goes on and on.
Just when you thought the most useless and unproductive component of the Arizona State University Police department was command staff you present the bomb canine and the corporal making Sgt pay, close to 70k to always be off campus and off scenes “training” all the time and leaving everyone scratching their head about how he gets 40hrs a week on the books.
As far as the topic of the article this is why everyone is doing more cheap, free, ONLINE training on sexual assault instead of going to classes where the university might have to pay for something. Crow is cheap when it comes to the public’s safety and goes Donald Trump when it comes to publicity about it. Let the talk continue until citizens and victims have had enough of it.
He’s another poster child of department mismanagement. When our patrol numbers are at crisis levels we have high priced officers who perform no patrol function and contribute nothing to the day to day running of the agency. In a word, bullshit.
After all these years Michael Crow is finally taking notice because other more important people have taken notice. Whoops! Pickens was more of an absentee landlord than they counted on and it’s time to spin a story.
Pickens’s incompetent police department management coupled with Crow’s junkyard dog, Kevin Salcido, taking a blind eye to sexual harassment and sexual abuse screwed the pooch on this issue beyond repair.
Maybe it’s time for Crow and his gang to take an interest in people before they become victims, before they needed the help he was in charge of providing by seeing that the Arizona State University Police department had competent leadership.
With national attention laser-focused on Arizona State University on many fronts, to include its police department, it appears President Crow is attempting to do damage control by spewing out illusions of caring and concern for the ASU community. That my friends, is prestidigitation at its best.
Most of us are baffled at how much expense the university will go through to maintain the reoccurring problems of it’s police department. Can they really have that much of a problem finding competent leadership?
If Crow was managing a football team over the last several years it would have been the New England Patriots. They achieved some wins and got ahead by cheating. The ends justify the means for unethical people.
Crow along with Pickens fudged Clery data by not reporting it correctly and claiming crime at ASU was something it wasn’t. Your ethics are what you do when you know nobody is watching, we’ve experienced that miserable failure, now that the world is watching it’s too late to remove the stains.
It never ceases to amaze me how this department wastes resources on it’s most unproductive members. The ASUpromotional catch phrase is, “We will hire someone to do the work, promote now to do less work and get more pay.”
Having said that this “rape training” is a fucking joke. We should be going to formal comprehensive classes like every other department, not spanking it on the computer so Mike Crow can have bragging rights to say we’re trained.
This situation proves that nothing changes at the university unless whistle blowers go outside the university for justice. With an issue as serious as rape look at how many issues occured prior to this publicity. When a public university has to be shamed into doing the right thing something is seriously wrong with the head management.
Hopefully a comprehensive investigation by the U.S. Department of Education will shed some much-needed light on how Arizona State University and its police department investigates and handles alleged sexual assaults.
And, if any wrongdoing is substantiated, those individuals that failed to abide by federal law must be held fully accountable by the federal government.
For our readers that are not familiar with Arizona State University’s leadership: Dr. Michael M. Crow is the president; Dr. Morgan R. Olsen is Executive Vice President, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer; and Kevin Salcido is Associate Vice President and Chief HR Officer in the Office of Human Resources.
An ounce of prevention does more than a pound of cure. With issue after issue catching Michael Crow with his pants around his ankles he would do well to utilize conventional wisdom before the next pitfall.
With the FBI already doing an ASUPD investigation the Department of Education would be another governing body piling on. Everyone knows that the Clery reports under current acting chief, former commander Rourke have been bogus for years.
Non reporting and false reporting by changing a crime classification in a police report to something it’s not is more than unethical, it’s illegal. Are these the values we want to teach at a state university?
Too little, too late, and too few people. The department will remain reactionary instead of proactive.
The continual public exposure by the media documenting how Arizona State University allegedly mishandled sexual assaults will eventually rock the foundation of President Crow’s New American University.
Congratulations Doctor Crow, 1001 rapes and a federal investigation finally sparked an interest in taking these issues seriously. If it wasn’t for the federal investigation and embarrassing press coverage there would be nothing done like the last 14 years under Pickens.