Assembly responds to stabbings
Three days after the stabbings outside the Alpha Tau Omega house, Student Association members expressed their outrage Tuesday night at the lack of communication between campus security and students. Assembly members said the university did not keep students well enough informed about what happened Sunday morning because the Syracuse University Department of Public Safety did not issue an Orange Alert message, or a safety e-mail, about the stabbings.
SA president Larry Seivert said he spoke with DPS, who said students were not alerted because the suspect was captured immediately. For many assembly members, this was not valid justification.
‘Other fraternities weren’t notified or told to be safer,’ said Helene Kahn, a senior policy studies major and member of the assembly. ‘There needs to be an open communication line.’
Other assembly members felt that an alert, notifying students that the assailant had been caught, would have been more effective than students spreading rumors. Kahn volunteered to lead the communication efforts. She said she will talk to security officials, and she will see if students feel they need more official information. She will also act as a liaison between officials and the student body going forward.
The assembly also voted to pass a bill stating the student response to the release of the only convicted Pan Am 103 bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. The bill was co-authored by Jon Barnhart, chair of the Student Engagement Committee, and Alec Sim, assembly member and Remembrance Scholar, with the help of Seivert and other Remembrance Scholars. The bill requests that the university remember the victims by having a campus-wide moment of silence each year on December 21 at 2:03 p.m., the exact time of the 1988 bombing.
The Finance Board elected two new members: Jeffrey Jackson, a junior transfer student, and Martin-Abdul Davis, a sophomore finance major. Robel Yemiru, a senior policy studies and economics major, was elected parliamentarian.
Published on September 22, 2009 at 12:00 pm
