Stalk­ing Aware­ness Month: Know What It Is and Get Tips on How to Stay Safe

MISHAWAKA--Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol, https://​www.cdc.gov/​in­jury/​fea­tures/​pre­vent-stalk­ing/​in­dex.html, one in six women and one in 17 men have ex­pe­ri­enced stalk­ing in their life­time. Fur­ther­more, this is of­ten hap­pen­ing to col­lege-aged in­di­vid­u­als, with 54% of fe­male vic­tims and 41% of male vic­tims re­port­ing hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced stalk­ing be­fore the age of 25. These sta­tis­tics make this a topic that col­lege com­mu­nity mem­bers should be aware of - in­clud­ing Bethel's. In recog­ni­tion of Na­tional Stalk­ing Aware­ness month, Di­rec­tor of Cam­pus Safety Paul Neel spoke with the Bea­con about what stalk­ing is and how stu­dents should re­spond if they feel they are be­ing stalked.

“Any­thing that seems or feels un­wanted, whether it’s rep­e­ti­tious or top­i­cally, some­times folks will start talk­ing about top­ics that don’t make you feel com­fort­able or other things like that,” Neel said. “Usu­ally, the biggest in­di­ca­tor is once you’ve asked some­one to . . . stop con­tact­ing you and they con­tinue to do it, that ob­vi­ously be­comes ha­rass­ment and stalk­ing-type be­hav­ior.”

Neel en­cour­ages stu­dents to dis­cuss un­com­fort­able sit­u­a­tions with res­i­dent as­sis­tants, res­i­dent di­rec­tors, in­di­vid­u­als in the Stu­dent Life Of­fice, the Well­ness Cen­ter or di­rectly with Cam­pus Safety. 

“The biggest thing to do is to be open and talk about it,” Neel said. “It’s not an in­di­ca­tion of shame or any­thing like that to talk about a sit­u­a­tion like that. Use the re­sources at hand.”

Neel said it is also im­por­tant to have con­ver­sa­tions with friends about it to see if they’re notic­ing the be­hav­ior as well.

“Of­ten, we find that the friends of­ten no­tice even be­fore the in­di­vid­ual does,” he said. “Be hon­est with one an­other and be open to talk about it.”

Neel said if a stalk­ing sit­u­a­tion were to es­ca­late and there was any con­cern or fear of dan­ger, stu­dents should call Cam­pus Safety or 911. He also dis­cussed a cou­ple of pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures, which in­cluded ex­er­cis­ing cau­tion on­line and set­ting clear bound­aries in per­sonal re­la­tion­ships, ro­man­tic or oth­er­wise. 

“Set those per­sonal bound­aries and stick to them,” he said. “That keeps things from es­ca­lat­ing to putting you in a po­si­tion that you don’t want to be in.”

Neel, who has also served as Bethel’s in­terim Ti­tle IX co­or­di­na­tor when needed, said it is im­por­tant for the school to abide by those Ti­tle IX guide­lines, not just be­cause of fed­eral re­quire­ments, but also be­cause it is the right thing to do for the Bethel com­mu­nity. Stalk­ing would be a clear Ti­tle IX vi­o­la­tion, ac­cord­ing to the pol­i­cy’s pur­pose.

“The best gen­eral de­f­i­n­i­tion [of Ti­tle IX] is: to en­sure that folks do not have their ed­u­ca­tional process un­duly in­ter­rupted or in­ter­fered with be­cause of ac­tions that may have hap­pened on or off cam­pus by an­other in­di­vid­ual, whether they’re as­so­ci­ated with the in­sti­tu­tion or not,” Neel said.

Bethel’s cur­rent Ti­tle IX co­or­di­na­tor is the newly hired Di­rec­tor of Hu­man Re­sources, Lisa Cut­ting. Ac­cord­ing to Bethel’s Sex­ual Mis­con­duct Pol­icy, stu­dents should call 574.807.7215 to make for­mal com­plaints about any­one not com­ply­ing with Ti­tle IX poli­cies.

Neel con­cluded by en­cour­ag­ing stu­dents to al­ways be safe rather than sorry.

“If you see some­thing, say some­thing,” Neel said. “Any­thing that feels sus­pi­cious is re­portable. And that’s in your re­la­tion­ships . . . that’s on or around cam­pus, we want peo­ple to al­ways feel com­fort­able reach­ing out to Cam­pus Safety or some­one in Stu­dent Life [if some­thing] just seems a lit­tle off.”

Cam­pus Safety can be reached by call­ing 574.807.7500 or by email­ing cam­pus­safety@bethelu­ni­ver­sity.edu.