Gathering for safety’s sake

Groups dealing with violence and sexual assault will crowd Bruin Plaza today as part of Campus Safety Awareness Week.

Organized by the Undergraduate Students Association Council’s Campus Safety Committee, the week of events will include a concert and fair on Monday and an American Civil Liberties Union personal rights workshop on Thursday.

The committee molded the events to address the Taser incident at Powell Library, the Virginia Tech shooting and “numerous incidences of crime” around campus, according to a press release.

“We want to educate students,” said Gregory Cendana, campus safety director of the Student Welfare Commission. The group wants to teach students about different resources on and off campus, he added.

“I think there are a lot of incidents that go unreported ““ incidents of sexual assault, hate crimes and things of this sort as well as campus theft,” he said.

In the most recent 2006 version of a UCLA Police Department Annual Report, there were four reported offenses of forcible rape, 20 of sexual offense and 68 offenses of assault.

“I know that rape happens consistently, and people don’t talk about it,” said Cultural Affairs Commissioner Bernice Julie Shaw. “Campus Safety Awareness Week will bring things that people normally don’t talk about into the open. That, to me, is completely necessary because otherwise students wouldn’t be exposed to these kinds of issues.”

Emergency medical technicians, university police officers, and members of the fire department and other protective organizations will be manning information tables during today’s event. In an effort to attract students, the L.A. Street Dance Collective will be performing at noon.

“It is something that will draw students in,” Shaw said. “Campus safety is something that students often overlook. If students are drawn to the events, then we can plug in an educational twist as well.”

On Tuesday, the Kerckhoff Art Gallery will host a reception, highlighting art that informs viewers about sexual violence as well as violence against women.

“It’s a heavy subject people don’t normally see,” Shaw said.

After the reception Tuesday, students can participate in creating their own art, as part of the quilt-making project in memory of the shooting at Virginia Tech.

Part of the organizers’ goals for the week is to inform students about emergency response procedures to prevent a Virginia Tech-type tragedy, Cendana said.

This month, the university implemented a text messaging service called BruinAlert. It is designed to send out a text message to each student in an emergency situation and is part of the university’s emergency response system.

The last event of the week, an ACLU workshop titled “Know Your Rights,” will be held in Ackerman in the second floor lounge.

“The ACLU presentation is specifically about knowing your rights and how to respond to different authority figures,” Cendana said.

Sara Harooni, a third-year sociology student, recalled when a Taser was used against a student at Powell Library, making nationwide headlines.

But she said she cannot recall any time when she or her friends felt seriously threatened by anyone on campus.

“I never heard of anything” that would make me feel threatened, Harooni said.

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