Response to violence, crime, and death on SIU-Carbondale's campus during the 2021-2022 school year has been inexcusable. As of November 8th, 2021, three students have passed away, not including crimes occurring within the five-mile radius surrounding the university inflicted upon/by non-students. With house parties being shot at, people being stabbed on the Strip, robberies, and a host of other incidents occurring just outside of campus, students feel less and less at ease with each coming headline.

To make matters worse, SIU staff and administration simply turn a blind eye to the incidents that impact students. The most that most is ever heard from the university of these incidents is a single email expressing condolences, along with the same copied-and-pasted paragraph about how CAPS services are available. Their students are passing away at a far from normal rate, and as a response, the administration simply plugs their name into the same generic email that they use for all Carbondale tragedies. 

With this being said, we are urging the university to adequately respond to such tragedies in order to maintain the wellbeing of their current student body so that there is not another name to add to the already long list of passed students. Our requests are as follows:

1.) Pass Undergraduate Student Government Senate Resolution 22-01. This includes implementing a Pass/No Pass grading option for the semester, a campus-wide mental health survey, and a declaration of emergency due to a campus-wide mental health crisis, which would close the school for three days. This resolution gives students time to take mental health breaks due to the traumatic events that have occurred this semester.

2.) Implement an improved emergency alert system for all SIU students. While there is an emergency alert system, the only time an alert is ever sent is when an incident happens on campus, ignoring the vast majority of violence that happens directly outside the campus. With an improved reporting system, students would receive real-time alerts on incidents in the five-mile radius surrounding campus. This would allow for better transparency between students and DPS/CPD officers. 

3.) Formal acknowledgment of SIU students who have passed, rather than an email. When we fail to say the names of victims, we can remove ourselves from the situation at hand. An acknowledgment of Keeshanna Jackson, Joseph Ermel, and Jacob Jurinek is the bare minimum that the administration can do to make their students feel seen. Though two of these deaths occurred outside of campus, the fact that there has been no word from the university about two of their own students speaks volumes. We are calling on Chancellor Austin Lane to host a Zoom conference in which he addresses students' concerns for the safety of themselves and their peers. When students are ignored even in the most dire of circumstances, it fosters a lack of transparency and trust for the school and its administration.