There are no simple solutions to campus security, but students themselves should shoulder some responsibility, writes CARL DE VILLIERS
Last Friday the life of a young female University of Zululand student was drastically changed forever.
The 22-year-old second year student was gang raped by three men in a student residence where a party was underway.
Known to the victim, the arrest of the accused was swift. They appeared in court at Mtunzini and are held in custody until their next court appearance on Tuesday.
The law will take its course, but whatever the outcome it will bring no relief to the victim, for whom the traumatic violation of her person has now scarred her for life.
Even if public opinion will bear no sympathy for the perpetrators – if they are found guilty that is – the sad fact is that the lives of the three accused will also have been destroyed.
The consequence of a single moment of madness.
To state the obvious, this incident is of course not unique to Unizulu. Reports of rape, sexual harassment and other disorderly conduct occur at all campuses.
The dilemma facing university and college authorities constantly stretched on resources, is to implement effective measures to prevent such episodes which, apart from the devastating impact on victims, severely tarnish the reputations of the institutions involved.
Parents want to be assured that tertiary institutions will shield their precious children against harm.
In reality, this is impossible – just as the government doesn’t come close to protecting the citizens of the country against rampant crime.
All the University of Zululand authorities can really do is to condemn the incident, assist the police with the investigation, comfort the parents as best they can and suspend the accused students once they are found guilty in court.
Limitations
From the practical point of view Unizulu, like all other tertiary institutions confronted with such violent cases, can do no more than the customary announcement that security patrols will be stepped up and so on – but this is more public relations than realistic solutions.
Young students exposed to social freedom for the first time will party hard, get drunk, have sex and behave like hooligans. Its a centuries old universal phenomena.
Unless universities can post a security officer on every floor of every residence, patrol every dark corner 24/7 and have officers stationed at every party, there can never be fool-proof safety and security.
The students will have none of it anyway.
When some years ago Unizul resisted mixed residences and installed strict access controls via a card system to monitor the traffic of outsiders, the students demonstrated against it.
While tertiary institutions must obviously explore all avenues of beefing up security, it is also incumbent on students themselves to take far more responsibility.
They are the ones close to events and when they sense matters are getting out of hand, they should act and call in security timeously.
