Sixth Sexual Attack Reported at SDSU : Women March at Campus, Mark Sites; Precautions Against Assault Are Urged

San Diego State University officials, revealing that a sixth campus-area sexual assault in six weeks occurred in a campus restroom Saturday night, issued an urgent call Tuesday for SDSU women to take precautions against attack.

The announcement came just 30 minutes before 200 women marched across campus in a previously scheduled “Take Back the Night” protest against the string of reported assaults that has plagued SDSU since just after school opened in early September.

Asking students to “be alert and be responsible,” spokesman Rick Moore warned women that “SDSU’s campus is no more or less safe than any other part of this city, and the people who come here should not be lulled into a false sense of security because this is a college campus.”

“This is not a time for denial,” Moore said during a hastily called news conference at the campus’ Aztec Center. “It is a time for being aware.”

He suggested that women use the campus escort service for night transportation and that men escort women to their cars.

In Saturday’s incident, the sixth since Sept. 6, a 27-year-old woman visiting the campus from Fresno was assaulted at gunpoint in a restroom in Hepner Hall after a forensics tournament. The woman, who was not raped, did not report the attack until she returned to Fresno Monday evening. SDSU police learned of it Tuesday morning.

SDSU Detective Joanne Gray said the attacks appear to be the work of different men but police have no suspects in the four cases in which women have decided to press charges.

The university has offered the escort service and rape awareness presentations by Gray for years, but Moore announced that a new committee was formed Tuesday to consider measures that SDSU can take to reduce the chances of sexual assault.

The panel Tuesday considered opening faculty and staff parking lots to students after 5 p.m. to reduce the use of remote parking lots; clustering night classes in centrally located buildings; adding lighting in high-risk areas, and asking instructors of night classes to warn students about rape.

But the women marchers staged a more dramatic protest, chanting and carrying flashlights as they circled the campus. As they passed points where assaults have taken place, women carrying placards reading “A Rape Occurred Here” stepped from the procession to mark the spot. Men were asked not to accompany the marchers, but they participated in a discussion of rape at the “free speech area,” where the march began.

“We expect when we come to this university, that we come to study and we shouldn’t be afraid,” said Robin Parke, co-coordinator of the Women’s Resource Center at SDSU. “But the reality is that rape occurs anywhere in society.”

Women participating in the march admitted to being afraid of attack on campus. Sophomore Dede Bertetto said she is now too fearful to wait for a bus outside SDSU’s Health Services building, where the Sept. 6 attack occurred, and is driven home by her boyfriend.

“I don’t see cops. I’d like to see people checking things out,” she said.

Graduate student Vicky Fulcher said: “I am aware when I walk around at night.”

She described her precautions as “sensible shoes, my hands unencumbered, able to make a fast getaway. Hopefully, I’m with a friend.”

SDSU has averaged one rape per semester in the past, but police do not know whether there are more rapes or simply more reports of rape this year, Gray said. She admitted that three assaults in public places is an unusually high number.

The previous assaults occurred:

- On Sept. 6, when an 18-year-old student returning to her apartment was raped in bushes in front of the Health Services building by a man who had offered to escort her home.

- On Sept. 18, when a 19-year-old UC Santa Barbara student said she was raped by a man in his room at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house after the two met at an off-campus party. She later decided not to press charges.

- On Sept. 21, when a 20-year-old SDSU student said she was raped by two men at an apartment after attending a post-football-game party at the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity house with them. She later decided not to press charges.

- On Oct. 13, when a 19-year-old former SDSU student was raped in an alley in the 5600 block of Montezuma Road near the campus.

- On Oct. 14, when an 18-year-old SDSU student was assaulted by a man who dragged her into bushes near the library after she left a night class. Her screams scared the assailant away.