As students we need to feel we are in a safe environment. From recent events dealing with the Jerry Sandusky scandal, more and more rape and sexual assault victims have been coming forward to report their own incidents even if it was unrelated to Sandusky. Students and citizens of the area have felt more empowered to report, but what does reporting do exactly when your rapist or the person who assaulted you is still able to walk around campus and attend possibly the same classes as you, or run into you at the hub or school events?

This petition is to encourage our Board of Trustee's to rethink the student code of conduct handbook and put into place more appropriate punishments for anyone who commits these acts. As of right now, they do include expulsion but far too often that is not the case for students committing these acts, lesser punishments are chosen more often then not. I believe there should be only two steps to occur. First, the student convicted of these crimes should be expelled and then second, there should be a student wide email informing students of the event (while respecting the victims privacy by not including their name or any other information disclosing who they are) and criminal involved just so they are aware of the dangers on and off campus and how to be safe.

Also, Penn State already has a text alert in place for weather and other safety warnings, but why not rape alerts? Every weekend on average there are between 6 and 40 rapes and sexual assaults that occur either on campus or downtown.  If a student does have an unfortunate incident and needs to call the police, Penn State is informed of these events within 30 minutes on average. If Penn State sends an alert to students via text and email, telling us the type of crime as well as where it occurred, we could make conscious decisions to avoid that section of town for our own safety as well as if your in the area, keep an eye out for suspicious activity.

It is hard enough to report the incident and then still go about your day and semester and focus on school as if you are fine. Students dealing with this situation do not need to worry that every time they leave the safety of their dorm or apartment that they have the option to run into that person again. Please support this petition, someone you know or even yourself, will be thankful you did.