Campus Safety
November 29, 2019
Administration sticks to policy, stays silent on identity of hate speech perpetrator
On Sunday, Nov. 3, reports of homophobic and racist slurs written on Goshen College’s campus were made to the college. On Nov. 4, the administration began two investigations into the incident and has since identified the party or parties involved. Despite calls from students to release the name or names of the perpetrators, the administration has withheld the information in accordance with the college’s policy on bias-related incidents. Since President Rebecca Stoltzfus condemned the hate speech in an email to the student body on Tuesday, Nov. 5, the administration has provided no further public information about the incident. Katie Baer,...
October 9, 2019
GC releases crime report
Each year on Oct. 1, colleges and universities around the nation are required to compile a public annual security report including statistics of campus crime for the previous three calendar years. In addition, campuses must include details about efforts taken to improve campus safety. This report became mandatory for all colleges and universities to release in 1990, when the Clery Act was passed in response to the rape and murder of Jeanne Clery at Lehigh Univeristy in 1986. Following her death, Clery’s parents campaigned for universities to be held accountable for not releasing information regarding campus safety. The Goshen College...
January 31, 2019
Extreme winter weather forces campus shutdown
In the midst of an arctic blast leading to nearly three days of sub-zero temperatures, Goshen College decided to close campus beginning Tuesday at 4 p.m. and lasting through Thursday at 4 p.m.. This is only the fourth time in school history the campus has closed due to extreme winter weather. All classes and extracurriculars are cancelled until the campus reopens. The dining hall is operating under special hours, 10 a.m. thru 6 p.m.. Following a warmer-weathered storm that dropped several inches of snow on Monday, frigid temperatures swept in during the day on Tuesday. The college announced the campus...
October 24, 2018
Title IX Committee to release sexual misconduct reports
In 2017, three counts of forcible sexual offenses were documented on the Goshen College campus, according to the Annual Campus Safety Report. In 2016, four counts of the same offense were documented in the report. But according to Beth Martin Birky, special assistant to the provost for Title IX, those seven offenses are only the incidents that occurred between January 2016 and December 2017 that fit the narrow definitions of crime specified by the Clery law and do not represent the total number of sexual misconduct reports on the Goshen College campus within the past two years. In fact, Birky...
September 26, 2018
Residence Life partners with FIRSST
This year, the Functional Immediate Response for Student Safety Team (FIRSST) will be partnering with Emily Hahn, Residence Life coordinator, to provide on-campus substance use education. “I believe that student-led initiatives and administration-led initiatives will be most successful when we work together toward our shared goals,” said Hahn. “That is why I am thrilled for the work that FIRSST, PIN and Student Life are doing this year.” In the past, FIRSST has not been recognized as an official on-campus club and thus had to work independently from Student Life. FIRSST was originally formed in 2015 in response to what students...
September 12, 2018
College pursues ‘culture of care’ in alcohol protocol shift
Attitudes toward alcohol violations are changing at Goshen College. But Chad Coleman, director of Student Life operations, quickly explained that Goshen College’s official rules regarding alcohol use have not changed. “This isn’t a policy change,” Coleman said. “It’s a change in protocol.” The Student Life “Guide to Community Life” continues to state that Goshen College is a dry campus — alcohol is not allowed on college property or at college-sponsored events. Students are expected to obey laws regarding underage drinking and to be responsible for themselves and their peers regarding the use and presence of alcohol. Student Life is not...
March 29, 2018
Active Shooter Response Training educates community
Goshen College, students, faculty and staff took part in an Active Shooter Response Training, led by the Goshen Police Department in the church chapel on Tuesday, March 27. The event was sponsored by Campus Safety and convocation credit was offered to all students who attended. Since Sandy Hook, over 400 people have been shot in more than 200 school shootings, according to the New York Times. With the number of mass shootings over 150 in 2018 alone, Chad Coleman, Director of Campus Safety & Housing Operations, decided it was time to inform the campus community on what to do, should...
October 12, 2017
Annual report records on-campus sexual offenses
The 2017 Annual Campus Safety Report and Crime Statistics document showed Goshen College as reporting four accounts of “forcible sex offenses.” While some may see it as regression for GC, others see it as the campus progressing. Goshen College President Ken Newbold said: “Through the work with students, we enhanced our website... and added some functionality for reporting sexual misconduct, as well as racial misconduct. With that, we have better information and with better information we can report with greater accuracy and I think that was the biggest change this year. We’ve had more reports, which is good because then...
November 10, 2016
Art department seeks to recover missing painting
A campus communicator announcement recently brought attention to an ongoing mystery. It explained the story of a missing piece of art with the request: “If you happen to have this piece, please return it to the art department; no questions will be asked.” A watercolor painting donated by its creator, John Blosser, professor emeritus of art, was discovered to be missing from its spot in storage over a year ago. Although its monetary value is not high, the work has a lot of meaning for the artist and the college. It has been entered in a number of shows, and...
October 6, 2016
GC applies to be a bike friendly campus
Goshen College may seem bike-friendly to many, but it’s up to the League of American Bicyclists to decide whether that will become an official title. In May of 2016, Nat Dick, a junior environmental science major, sent in Goshen College’s application for the Bicycle Friendly University (BFU) program. Dick, with the help of Jack Shomberg, a senior, came up with the idea to apply for the recognition during Jerrell Richer’s environmental economics class in the fall of 2015. However, Shomberg went on SST during the spring of 2016, leaving Dick with the task of filling out and submitting the application....
January 21, 2016
Student Safety Team makes Title IX demands
Goshen College’s Functional Immediate Response Student Safety Team (FIRSST) has submitted a list of demands to the college’s Title IX Committee concerning the school’s policies regarding sexual violence and assault. According to Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA) from 2015, while in college, one in five college women experience physical sexual violence or assault and 43 percent experience some type of “violent or abusive dating behaviors.” More than 40 percent of LBGTQIA+ or non-binary college students say they have “experienced intimate partner violence” and the website Know Your IX reports 1 in 20 college men will be physically sexually assaulted...
October 8, 2015
GC students can call FIRRST for safe escort home
The house is unfamiliar, filled with no-name faces. It’s dark and stuffy inside, bodies stacked up against one another, the music is loud and the air is thick. Go outside and you’re on the street, trying to remember the way home, but can’t. Your ride left somewhere between beer number three and eight and now you’re stranded, weighing your options. Pull out your cell phone and dial. The Functional Immediate Response to Student Safety Team is waiting to answer your call. Known as FIRSST, the Functional Immediate Response to Student Safety Team is built off of the initiative to create...
September 17, 2015
Goshen College revises crisis plan
Earlier this month, one student at Savannah State University and at Sacramento State College were shot to death on their respective campuses. Closer to Goshen, a Purdue University student was shot and killed on campus last year. Goshen College’s crisis management team is updating the college’s plan to make sure students know what to do in an emergency situation, be it a gunman on campus, a tornado or another type of emergency. The college’s crisis management plan is nearly a decade old, a document of several pages inside a thick, white binder that sits on the desk of Brian Guetig,...
September 10, 2015
Recent increase in local crime rates spreads to GC
Crime rates in the city of Goshen are increasing, according to Brian Guetig, GC’s new security director. And since Goshen College has “a very open campus” says Guetig, anything that does happen outside the campus seems to migrate onto it. So far this school year, four bikes have been reported stolen, two of which had been locked. This number is higher than usual on Goshen’s campus, though Guetig notes that upon “reviewing the statistical information, it seems that there are heavy bike thefts at the beginning of a school year and that it eventually tapers off as time goes by.”...
February 5, 2015
Student safety shuttle will operate on weekends
The Student Safety Shuttle will run every Friday and Saturday night through the rest of the semester. It is available to any students who do not think that they can get back home safely from a party. According to those closest to the project, the goal of the shuttle is to safely get students back to campus and prevent things like sexual assault. Laura Miller, a sophomore and treasurer of the Student Senate, referenced the death of a Goshen resident who froze to death after passing out from intoxication on his way home in January as motivation for the shuttle....