Protecting Our Kids on Campus

Early on a September morning in 2007, two men entered a Canadian university residence undetected. It was just hours after a campus pub night that followed the second day of classes. Students in the coed dorm had reportedly posted their names on their doors to introduce themselves to their new residence-mates—which may have helped the intruders find female-occupied rooms.

Students later reported that the men entered several rooms, but left after being scared away or discovering a group of people inside. Eventually they found an unlocked room where a lone woman slept. They took turns raping her, raped another woman in a second room and then fled.

Less than two weeks later, police arrested two men. They were charged with break and enter, sexual assault and forcible confinement. Important questions remain unanswered: How did they gain access to secure dorms? Why were the victims’ rooms unlocked? Why didn’t other students report the suspicious men roaming through the dormitory?

While the campus rape case may be an extreme example, it shows how potential holes in security and students’ trusting natures can combine to make them easy crime targets. To students, universities feel safe and secure, and they often leave dorm rooms unlocked and property unattended.

“Students go into places like student pubs and believe that just because others are there, they are safe,” says Bob Ferguson, director of campus safety at the University of Saskatchewan. “It isn’t necessarily so.”

Any illusion that Canadian campuses are safe havens from serious crime was shattered on the day of the Montreal Massacre—December 6, 1989—when a gunman killed 13 female students and a school employee at the Ecole Polytechnique before committing suicide. Then, on August 24, 1992, professor Valery Fabrikant shot four colleagues to death at Concordia University in Montreal.

The city reeled in shock once again on September 13, 2006, when a man opened fire at Dawson College, killing 18-year-old Anastasia De Sousa and injuring 16 others.

These shootings, and the 2007 rampage at Virginia Tech that claimed 33 lives, including the shooter’s, were wake-up calls to Canadian universities, which have been rethinking security for two decades now. “Virginia Tech shook us to the bone,” says Lanny Fritz, director of campus security at the University of Calgary. “Now we are trying to figure out what more we can do.”