Zero tolerance for stalkers on campus

Chris Curry

The Signal Staff

The University of Houston-Clear Lake is in the process of updating student life policies, and dealing with stalkers on campus is one of the more pertinent issues being addressed.

The National Center for Victims of Crime reported that 13 percent of college women were stalked in 1996, but the extensiveness of stalking among adults in the United States has not been assessed on the national level since. Statistics on this issue may be difficult to gather accurately because most stalking victims do not report incidents to the police.

Anthony Jenkins, dean of students, and Paul Willingham, chief of police at UHCL, are working together to promote stalking awareness at UHCL.

They are responsible for bringing Rape Aggression Defense classes to the campus each semester to help women develop defensive techniques to ward off attacks, introducing stalker awareness sessions during student orientation, and providing anonymous notification forms for students to privately voice their personal concerns to the proper authorities.

“I am very candid with students that my authority stops at Bay Area Boulevard,” Jenkins said. “So we make sure to talk about how students need to be aware of their surroundings both off and on campus.”

College campuses are ideal environments for stalkers because students tend to develop routines and can be easily tracked. It can be difficult for campus officials to track down a stalker.

“On the campus, people blend in,” Jenkins said. “That’s why I always ask for a photo of the individual whom you are having some concern with and those photos are given to university police so they know who they are dealing with.”

Jennifer McNally, an undergraduate psychology major, experienced stalking first hand at another college campus. Her stalker, a wheelchair-user, was verbally threatening toward her on a daily basis, but authorities did not take his threats seriously because of his disability. McNally was even viewed as the aggressor when she filed complaint reports with campus police.

“In my case, I looked like the bad guy because ‘here is this poor guy in a wheelchair and she’s calling the police on him,’” McNally said. “I feel stalking is very much underreported. It really feels more like a ‘he said, she said’ thing, from what I went through, because there was no physical damage.”

Rachael Gunter, an undergraduate history major, was also stalked on another college campus. She was treated similarly to McNally. She was called in by the dean who told her all the things she could not do as a result of being stalked as opposed to telling her how she could be helped.

“Now I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’m not stalking him!’” Gunter said. “You know, I’m not harassing him. [The dean] told me what happens on campus, but I asked her what happens when I’m confronted off campus? Her exact words were ‘that is not my jurisdiction.’ I was a freshman undergrad, he was a 26-year-old grad student in geology and he had gotten his undergrad there. I’m not sure what role that played in it, but there was really no support from the campus.”

Both McNally and Gunter say UHCL is a much safer campus. McNally reported the negative experiences she had with the stalker on her old campus and received a positive response.

“Dr. Jenkins sent a letter to him saying that he would be banned from UHCL if I reported that he was harassing me,” McNally said. “This did end up happening and Dr. Jenkins banned him from campus until I am done here as a student. Since then I have never had a run in with him on campus.”

The student life policy does not currently include guidelines for handling stalkers on campus, which Jenkins hopes to revise. Jenkins also plans to include cyber stalking prevention and awareness, which most universities do not have in their policy.

“I was very jaded when I got to UHCL because of my experience at my prior school,” Gunter said. “I was pleasantly surprised to meet Jennifer and learn that we shared similar experiences. The action taken by Dr. Jenkins and the campus police to ban her stalker before even having an incident was just amazing to me.”

January is National Stalking Awareness Month. Women’s services, with the Intercultural and International Student Services Office, will be hosting events throughout January in support of building awareness for this issue.

“Call it what it is early and the next step is to report it, because the earlier you report a stalker the better off you are going to be,” Gunter said. “Women should know that stalking is very dangerous, that it does progress quickly, that their best option is to report it early and that UHCL will take it very seriously.”