Attack in the Village

To: Georgia State University Faculty, Staff and Students

From: Carl V. Patton, President

I write to inform you of an incident that occured yesterday (Dec. 2) in the Georgia State University Village. Shortly before 3 p.m., a male knocked on a door in the Sparta building of the Village. A resident opened the door and the male forced his way into the apartment. The women in the apartment were held against their will and the intruder sexually assaulted two of the residents. The other women were not physically harmed. The intruder then left the premises. The victims were able to give a description of the intruder. The police are currently investigating the incident.

I strongly encourage all members of the university community to take precautions whether you work on campus or are a resident of one of our housing units.

If you do reside in the Village or Lofts, please follow these measures to help assure you safety:

1. Lock your doors at all times.

2. Look through the peephole in the door to make sure you recognize the person knocking.

3. Do not open the door to anyone or let anyone in the apartment who you do not know.

4. Call the Georgia State University Police if someone unknown attempts to gain entry to your apartment.

5. Do not allow unknown persons or persons who are not residents of the Village to follow you into the Village.

To the entire Georgia State community:

Be aware of your surroundings. Also, you don’t have to walk alone. You may request a safety escort on campus by calling the Georgia State University Police at (404) 651-2100 or you may contact the Village Police station at (404) 206-5900. An officer or a cadet will drive or walk you to your destination.

If you see suspicious persons or activites, please call the Georgia State University Police at #. Also, I encourage you to contact Crime Prevention at # for safety tips and programs.

Thank you for your time.

As all of you know, I live in the GSU Village. At the time of this unfortunate incident, I was on my way home. The Sparta building is the Freshman building and is on the opposite side of the Village complex from where I live. Getting in a room is very difficult: you must go through steel gates that require an access card; you must enter in the individual buildings that can be unlocked with either a key or an access card, and then you must open up a room with a key.

The news has been around the state paper for the past few days now. From what I read, the intruder was allowed in the Village, Sparta, and then in the girls’ suite.

I already detailed the amount of security someone needs to get through in order to attack someone. You’re not supposed to leave the door open for someone. However, everyone does it without second thoughts. For me, I’ll leave the door open only if the person is about 3 steps behind me (tentatively).

There have been questions about how they could increase security. As I said, security has been pretty good because there hasn’t been a ton of attacks since it was built. However, the Village was built before the 1996 Olympics to house the Olympic athletes. Anyway, the security officials have to decide whether to keep security the way it is, or increase it. The only problem is that they wouldn’t want it someone to feel like the Village is a fortress.

Thanks for the feedback on the poem. The only reason why I say it sucks is because I’m more comfortable writing stories than poems. Poetry is kind of like a foreign language to me in a way. Thanks for all the compliments though :-).