Crime numbers through Halloweekend stayed relatively low compared to last week’s numbers, with a total of 28 incidents reported on the University of Oregon Police Department’s crime log.

Here’s the breakdown of this week’s numbers:

– 2 Marijuana possessions
– 4 trespassing incidents
– 18 theft-related crimes
–  2 incidents of graffiti

Barnhart Hall was the site of three different incidents this week.

Follow Dahlia Bazzaz on Twitter @Dahliabazzaz

Got a place on campus you think needs a little TLC or security improvements? The University of Oregon’s annual Campus Night Safety Walk, which takes place this Thursday, was created to address those concerns.

The event involves a walk around campus with representatives from campus operations and the UOPD, to name a couple. Though students are invited to walk along and voice any suggestions, the turnout is notoriously low, said UOPD public information officer Kelly McIver.

After the walk, the university directs funds into projects developed by campus operations in order to address problem areas pointed out on the walk.

This year’s walk will kick off from Lillis 112 at 5 p.m.

Even if you can’t make it, you can fill out a short poll designed by the Emerald here.

Follow Dahlia Bazzaz on Twitter: @dahliabazzaz.

Since 2009, 17 campus crime alerts have been sent out about cases of unwanted sexual contact. But those are only a fraction of the sexual assault reports that the UOPD and the University of Oregon receive.

These alerts only represent one type of sexual assault — those that involve an unknown perpetrator.

Carly Smith, a doctoral candidate in the UO’s psychology department, says that crime alerts with such a narrow focus help propagate myths of sexual assault as a “stranger danger” type of crime.

But, 73 percent of sexual assault survivors know their perpetrator, according to the findings of a UO campus climate survey and national statistics from the Rape, Abuse and Incest Network.

“Does that say implicitly that these are the only types of sexual assault we care about?” said Smith.

Campus Crime Alerts a tool for alert and prevention — but when?

Campus crime alerts, officially called Timely Warnings, are a requirement under the Jeanne Clery Act, a federal statute passed in 1990 that requires all colleges and universities using federal financial aid programs to disclose information about crime on campus.

Universities must send out alerts for certain types of crimes, including sexual assault, that occur on campus or in affiliated buildings. But aside from geographical boundaries, there are few guidelines to when a university must issue an alert.

The basic guiding principle for releasing a crime alert is whether or not it’s a serious or ongoing threat to the campus community.

Most of the time, acquaintance-perpetrated sexual assaults don’t make the cut at UO.

According to Kelly McIver, UOPD Public Information Officer, there’s an issue of privacy and due process violations of the students involved, and second, a known perpetrator is perceived as less of a danger.

When a survivor names a perpetrator, McIver says, action can be taken right away to investigate the suspect.

But Dr. Jennifer Freyd, who, along with doctoral students Smith and Marina Rosenthal created UO’s campus climate survey on student experiences with sexual assault, echoes the concern that alerts may lead to misguided assumptions about the crime.

“Unfortunately, providing alerts about only certain types of sexual assault (such as dark alley assaults) while ignoring more common sexual assaults (often off campus at parties, for example) leads to a misunderstanding among students and the community about both the prevalence and locale of sexual assaults,” said Dr. Freyd in an email.

In May, Dr. Freyd filed a complaint with the Department of Education accusing the the university of violating the Clery Act by failing to send out an alert about the alleged sexual assault committed by three members of the UO men’s basketball team in March.

While the UOPD recognizes that false perceptions of sexual assault could be an outcome, McIver said that there are better ways to promote education than through crime alerts.

“Fulfilling the Clery standards (for campus crime alerts) isn’t necessarily the best communications or marketing effort,” he said.

Campus crime alerts reinforce rape myths:

Though UO’s crime alerts aren’t intended to be the main source for sexual violence information, many students use it as such. According to an experiment conducted by Smith in the summer of 2012, 96 percent of UO students participating said that they read campus crime alerts, and information was one of the top reasons cited for doing so.

Smith asked three groups of students to view crime alert emails. Each group was given a different crime alert email to read: one involving sexual assault perpetrated by a stranger, one involving sexual assault perpetrated by an acquaintance, and a control scenario about a gas leak.

Smith found that those who viewed the first crime alert, especially men, were more likely to perceive certain rape myths as accurate. The second crime alert had the opposite effect.

Survivors of acquaintance-perpetrated sexual assaults were also more likely to say they felt betrayed by the university after viewing the crime alert about the stranger — something Smith attributes to both the lack of representation in the crime alerts and unhelpful safety tips.

“If the only thing we’re telling them is that sexual assault is perpetrated by strangers and that the way to stay safe is to have your friends walk you home. That is just missing the point,” said Smith.

Crime alerts at other schools:

Around the country, other universities such as University of West Florida, Oberlin College and the University of Iowa, have chosen to share more cases of sexual assault with their campuses, whether or not the perpetrator has been identified.

Jane Glickman, a press officer for the Department of Education — the government entity that enforces compliance of the Clery Act — says that this variation from school to school is normal.

“Timely warnings can vary as long as they comply with the requirements of the Clery Act’s provisions,” said Glickman.

However, it’s UO’s duty, says Dr. Freyd, to go above and beyond what Clery requires in order to make sure the campus community stays informed and safe.

“Even if the Clery handbook does not require something specifically, the University of Oregon can choose to be more protective of its students,” she said. 

But the UOPD’s crime alerts often report crimes affecting UO students outside of the areas that Clery requires the university to report on, like the Oct. 31 alerts about a break-in and physical harassment of a UO student at her apartment on Kinsrow Avenue.

Recent changes:

In the last few years, UOPD has been working with advocates to improve the language found in crime alerts.

The first changes came in 2012 after a meeting with the Alliance for Sexual Assault Prevention, McIver says. This resulted in adding trigger warnings to protect survivors reading crime alerts.

After Smith presented some of the findings from her experiment, she worked with McIver and the UOPD to alter the safety tips found below the main text of the alerts. Instead of encouraging people to keep distance from strangers, recent emails state that “no action or inaction by a crime survivor makes that person responsible for his or her victimization.”

The university also plans to release a quarterly digest this term that includes the numbers for other types of sexual assault reported but not sent out through crime alerts.

Other plans the university has for education and prevention include the bystander intervention program, which recently put out a video in response to the White House’s national campaign, “Not Alone.”

Tucked on the other side of Franklin Boulevard, across from the Ford Alumni Center, sits the temporary home of the University of Oregon’s psychology department and clinic: the Franklin building. 

That’s where you’ll find Carly Smith. 

Smith is a lot of things: a Chicago native, a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology, an aspiring psychology professor, a researcher and one member of the trio responsible for developing the campus climate survey this September.

The survey collected data about UO students’ experiences with sexual assault. 

“This is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do,” said Smith. Even as a graduate student in experimental psychology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, clinical psychology was always the goal. And being a psychologist had been on her radar for even longer. 

“I remember in third or fourth grade they’d ask us, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And even at that time I said that I wanted to be a psychologist. And the teachers were like, ‘What’s wrong with this kid?” 

Smith came to Oregon in 2010 after being accepted to work with UO psychology professor Jennifer Freyd. She was initially drawn to Dr. Freyd’s well-founded theory of betrayal: 

“If you are abused by someone you trust or depend upon, that is going to be naturally worse than if it’s someone you don’t know.” 

For the past four years, Smith’s been applying such a theory to her research of institutional betrayal.

Before even attending Oregon, she knew that sexual assault reporting on campus would be one of her primary topics of research. 

“I wish that students had more reason to trust in the process,” she said. “I wish reporting and justice were much more closely aligned.” 

According to the results of the survey created by Dr. Freyd, Smith and colleague Marina Rosenthal, 90 percent of survey participants that said they had received unwanted sexual contact chose not to report the incident. 

The number drops to 86 percent for survivors of rape.

In addition, one out of 10 women surveyed said that they had been raped while attending the UO. But for Smith — who’s been interacting with victims of sexual assault at the university for the last three years — the survey’s results weren’t surprising. 

Smith has been working with students through the psychology department’s clinic. She has been surveying undergrads while they fulfill participation requirements in psychology and linguistics classes.

One question that appeared on the survey hadn’t been seen before. 

That was a question of individual knowledge of friends’ experiences with unwanted sexual contact and rape. It was a question that the team hadn’t posed before, and Smith wasn’t expecting so many peers to be willing to answer on their friends’ regard. 

This question shows importance for survivors to know that they are not alone.

“It’s really mind-bending to hear people over and over say that they think they’re the only one that this has happened to,” she said. 

Note: This wrap-up includes new incidents added to the University of Oregon Police Department’s crime log from October 17. To see the rest of that day’s reports, refer back to last week’s wrap-up.

The football game at Autzen on October 18 brought both a victory for the Ducks and an abundance of alcohol-related offenses. As a result, this week’s crime numbers were over twice as high as week 3′s.

The Phish concert at Matthew Knight Arena on October 17 might have also contributed to the spike in substance-related crimes.

Besides drugs and alcohol, the most common crimes during week 4 were the usual theft and graffiti.

Bike theft and burglary can serve as top crimes in the campus community. But lately the Eugene Police Department warns that more sinister behaviors are taking place — and it’s almost impossible to catch their perpetrators: fraud and scams. 

Fraudulent crimes don’t just affect its victim in one medium, as the EPD cites over a dozen types of fraud in a document on its website.

Some examples are stolen debit cards, pyramid schemes, impersonating people through online dating and home improvement scams. 

According to EPD’s Crime Prevention Specialist Tod Schneider, students looking for housing or jobs online tend to be easy targets. 

Schneider recalls that in one case, a student looking for housing started communicating with someone who had posted a fake ad. Using images from another post on Craigslist, the scammer was able to access the victim’s personal information through the rental agreement and make off with the house’s down payment.

The scammer also attained keys to the home and gave the student a showing before skipping out of town and cutting off communication. 

It can be great deals offered at ridiculously low prices that people are lured into scams. But if it seems too good to be true — it probably is. 

“We all like to be in a windfall,” said Schneider. “You’re always better off if you can find someone to bounce things off of before giving away money or information.” 

But sometimes the scammers are halfway around the world, which is often true for crimes where card information is stolen and then sold on the internet. 

Over the last summer, sophomore international studies major Jennifer Eyler, along with several members of her sorority chapter Kappa Alpha Theta, had their debit card information compromised. 

“I was away at summer camp, and my mom told me she received an email from Chase saying that I had made three purchases in Moscow, Russia,” said Eyler. 

That’s when catching the scammer gets tricky, said EPD Detective Steve Williams. 

“Most of the scam reports that come in are through online and overseas (transactions). We can’t investigate them. The most we can do is notify the FBI or get the victim to file a report, but it’s kind of a black hole,” said Williams. 

And when it’s not conducted over the internet, scams are enabled through the kindness of other people. 

“(Scams are) designed to get at your emotions — to get you either excited or distraught. When you get someone emotional, you can convince them to do things that are illogical,” said Schneider. 

Detective Williams noted that sometimes scammers roam streets like 13th Avenue looking for people to cash fraudulent checks. The victim will be asked to pull money from her own bank account in exchange for a check that will eventually bounce. Scammers typically offer some excuse of needing fast cash in order to alleviate some sort of personal emergency. 

Williams recommends making a photocopy of your wallet’s contents periodically. If it ever gets stolen, the copies will help with canceling cards. 

According to the University of Oregon Police Department’s weekly crime log, three people were arrested on campus for meth possession related charges last week.

One of the three charges involved the arrest of 31-year-old Robert Harlan Jubber outside of Barnhart Hall on Oct. 11, who was questioned while trespassing UO grounds.

Jubber was found carrying meth, drug paraphernalia, bolt cutters and a license plate from a Lane County public works vehicle.

According to the University of Oregon Police Department Communications officer Kelly McIver, Jubber already had an arrest warrant out for violating his parole, and gave false information to UOPD when he was stopped.

He was then taken to Lane County Jail on charges of parole violation, meth possession, third-degree theft and resisting arrest, among others. Jubber had a history of trespassing onto UO grounds.

McIver said that the department has noticed an “uptick in meth possession” while stopping individuals who are not students on campus for trespassing or other behavior. Most of the time, the subject isn’t openly using meth, but the drug is later discovered by officers upon search.

Bike thefts also increased last week, with a total of seven reported stolen.

This is a normal crime trend, according to McIver. The reported numbers of stolen bicycles always seems to spike in October; thieves anticipate the campus bike racks filling up with the influx of students returning every fall – and bank on the ones that aren’t secured safely.

The University of Oregon accepted the White House’s “It’s On Us” challenge today with the release of a two-minute long video. The video, which is part of an effort to fight sexual assault, features UO student leaders from a variety of campus organizations.

The video, titled “Ducks Do Something,” is a peer-to-peer effort to inspire students to get involved with creating a culture of respect and taking care of one another, according Rita Radostitz, director of strategic communications for Student Life.

“Sexual assault doesn’t happen in isolation,” said Radostitz. The message of the video is also intended to inspire bystander intervention.

It was a collaborative effort, too. Videographers from the University’s athletic department filmed the video, and students were invited to help contribute to the video’s script.

Other universities, like the University of Oklahoma and St. John’s University in Queens, New York, have released similar videos in the last month.

Many know the Sexual Wellness Advocacy Team from its plays during IntroDUCKtion every summer. But for members of SWAT, that’s not even the half of it. Throughout the year, SWATers put on workshops for any department or class that requests them. It’s a mix of script-writing, retreats, peer education and acting — all sex-positive and all in the name of ending sexual violence.

Name: Ruchi K. Mehta

Major: Psychology, human and family services

Year in school: Senior 

Hometown: Evanston, Illinois

What was it like when you first joined? 

The night before my very first SWAT workshop, I was a nervous wreck. It was for a women and gender studies class at eight or nine o’clock in the morning, and I kept waking up and having dreams about being late to the workshop.

What do you get out of SWAT? 

I think I know a lot better how to deal with someone who told me they were sexually assaulted.

How would you respond to someone who told you that they were sexually assaulted? 

I don’t think there’s ever an end-all, be-all answer to that question. Everyone is different. But I’d tell them I believe them, and that I’m sorry for what happened to them… To know that what happened to you was wrong — that’s powerful.

Name: Ayasha Benninghoven

Major: Advertising, minor in history

Year in school: Junior 

Hometown: Coos Bay, Oregon

Did something inspire you to participate in sexual violence prevention? 

I come from a difficult background. I spent a lot of my childhood watching women not being respected.

What have you learned through your work with SWAT? 

Statistics were the stuff that really shocked me. It also really helped me in my work as a Resident Assistant. You live with all of these people you don’t know, and they tell you about their lives. And not everyone is looking for an answer when they’re telling you something. They just want someone to listen.

Name: Lindsey Brown

Major: Political science

Year in school: Senior 

Hometown: Anchorage, Alaska

What was initially appealing to you about SWAT? 

I love that it’s peer to peer. It’s an intense message presented in an accessible manner. We start a conversation instead of present a lecture that everyone hears over and over again.

What’s your favorite role to play in SWAT workshops? 

I tend to play the sassier characters. Sometimes it’s a mean barista that slut-shames another barista after she gets hit on. It gives us a platform to talk about survivor-blaming.

How do people react when you tell them you’re in SWAT? 

Oh, they’re not surprised at all. They expect it. I’ve always been very vocal about gender and sexual violence. And I’m generally the first one to call people out on stuff.

The Street Fair’s over and so is week 3. Here’s what the University of Oregon’s Police Department had on its plate for the last week:

– Seven reports of bicycle theft

– Two reported thefts from the Street Fair on October 16

– Three reports of meth possession, all of which ended in arrests

– One arrest made at Barnhart Hall for meth possession, false information offered to a police officer, resisting arrest, criminal trespassing and theft

Data from this week can be viewed on the UOPD’s website under crime info.