Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 25, 1994 TAG: 9410250054
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Many were alarmed at semester's start when the classic horror story played out twice on well-traveled Roanoke Street. Two different young men attacked two different young women apparently unknown to them. Nobody was hurt, at least physically. The attackers were scared off.
Some good has come of it. According to Blacksburg police officer Jerry Bowyer, the fraternities on the street may organize into a self-policing neighborhood crime watch to protect their partygoers.
Scuttlebutt has it that requests have been made over the years to improve lighting on the formerly dark road, to both the town, which pays the bills, and VPI Electric, which owns the lights. But a tangle of issues emerges when it comes to street lighting. Resident complaints often drive the process, say town officials. And, as Blacksburg police Capt. Walter Mosby sensibly points out: "Just because it's a well-lit place does not guarantee [a person] may not be attacked."
Still, it's hard to imagine that somebody, sometime before now, didn't ensure that such a well-worn, late-night student path didn't have some decent lights. The old streetlights must have been put up before the dawn of wattage. Ghostly apparitions shimmering vapidly from an alleged bulb do not a safer neighborhood make.
Is anybody out there inspecting other dim, well-traveled corners of town?
It's great to live in a place with little serious crime. But the false security factor here seems fairly high.
Last spring, at one of the public information sessions where university planners unveiled ideas for Virginia Tech's new master plan, a woman scouring one of the blueprints asked about a proposed parking garage. She wondered how security there would be handled. The nearby consultant seemed surprised that she should ask, then allowed as to how the garage would be lighted.
I flashed to the dark winter semester I took a class at a big-city university. I'd sprint in a panic from campus to my assigned parking space located in an empty, lighted garage five blocks away, never resting until I was behind the wheel of my locked car and headed home.
Then there are the statistics.
"Research shows, nationally, that over 80 percent of [sexual] assaults are by someone the victim knows," said Judy Casteele, assistant director of the Women's Resource Center of the New River Valley.
Locally? Get this: Of 153 sexual assaults reported to Casteele's office last year, only four of the assailants were strangers to their victims.
Security experts say that good public lighting is a crime deterrent. But the statistics also show that the perception of safety is a paradox.
Meantime, Tech's new Women's Center held an open house last week. While the center will have one employee who deals with sexual assaults, this is in no way a rape crisis center alone.
Located in one of the oldest buildings on campus, where, ironically, the all-male corps of cadets bunked two-to-a-room a century ago, the center is the place to turn for all manner of women's issues.
Support to women faculty members, seminars to groups on sexual harassment, referrals and more come under the center's mission.
Among their recent requests: Helping a young student deal with her landlord after signing her first lease. The woman needed some back-up to get up her nerve to ask the landlord to change the locks.
The center also is expected to help retain women faculty members, who've come to expect such a network-clearinghouse on campuses.
"If we make this institution have a better climate for women, they will more likely come when given the opportunity - as students, faculty or staff," said Penny Burge, the center's director.
"Like most other structures in our society, we still have a very white, patriarchal hierarchy. Not that we're unique in that."
Funded through the provost's office, the center is located on the second floor of Lane Hall. For further information, call 231-7806.
by CNB