An alleged sexualt assault in Rivers Hall was reported by UNA police on Sunday, Oct. 13. The assault allegedly occurred Aug. 20, although the alleged victim, a female, did not notify university police until Oct. 12, said police Chief  Bob Pastula.

“(The alleged crime) was between known parties and is being investigated by the police and the student conduct board,” Pastula said.

The case does not represent a current threat to the campus community, since the two individuals involved knew each other, Pastula said. Similarly, the campus community was not alerted because the crime had already occurred, he said.

“If (a crime presents) a danger to the campus then we will send out a Lion Alert,” Pastula said.

Members of the student conduct board learned of the investigation during a group meeting, said Kevin Jacques, director of residence life.

“We heard about it during this past week, during a weekly conduct ad-hoc meeting that we had,” Jacques said. “This is a unique case in that it happened that night and was reported later. Our Title IX coordinator Joan Williams is doing the investigation, per federal law.”

Once Williams has completed her investigation, the board will process her findings and determine what the next steps in the case should be, Jacques said.

Residence Life officials and staff follow specific protocol during investigations such as this, he said.

“What we do with everything is that we provide support to any victim (by working) with conduct and with police,” Jacques said. “If there’s been any kind of no-contact issues ordered, then we can notify our staff that there is not to be contact. Mostly what we do with this and all of our situations whether it’s physical violence, sexual misconduct or assault or anything is we really try to be there from a support standpoint.”

Residence Life staff rely on campus safety officials to communicate crime to the campus community, which is why residents were not immediately notified of the current investigation, Jacques said.

“We don’t want to impede in any investigation because those are so prescribed on what has to be done,” he said. “When it comes to any sort of notification, we defer to Chief (Pastula) and Mr. (David) Shields to make those notifications because they go out from that safety standpoint, whether it’s through a Lion Alert (or) an email. If we’re told we need to get stuff out, we jump. We can’t sit and wait.”

Jacques believes that students have become overly comfortable with the overall lack of crime on campus this semester, he said.

“I think our students right now are feeling really comfortable, just based on some informal conversations we’ve had, almost to the point of being too comfortable,” he said. “That’s where our concern comes in. We’ve had to have conversations with students about leaving ID cards hidden somewhere so they cannot have to worry about going out for a run or a key hidden somewhere because they didn’t want to take it out with them.”

Good campus safety practices start with the choices of each individual, Jacques said.

“We’ve got to be the ones that really watch out for ourselves,” he said. “We’ve got to be the ones to really watch out for our neighbors and there’s a lot of different ways to do that. We need to keep that at heart.”