- Publication: The Atlanta Journal
- Author: Kathy Scruggs, Staff Writer
- Original Publication Date: Friday, April 24, 1992
A safe-campuses organization founded by a University of Georgia graduate will use the slaying of a UGA student to push the school administration to provide more information about campus crime, group members said today.
The slaying of Jennifer Lynn Stone, a 22-year-old senior from Roswell, should raise the consciousness of an administration that has declined to publish statistics about off-campus crimes against students, said members of Safe Campuses Now Inc.
About 75 percent of UGA students live off-campus, according to school officials.
“The administration can’t ignore this anymore,” said Dave Blount, 23, head of the Athens office of Safe Campuses Now. “By reporting these crimes, it would not make the university look less desirable, but more desirable because they will be giving the honest, real picture.”
UGA spokesman Tom Jackson said the university offers incoming students extensive orientation on safety issues, including how to choose an apartment and how to outfit it for security.
“We don’t provide off-campus crime statistics because there’s no way to tell who’s a student and who’s not,” he said, adding that the university does publish annual on-campus crime statistics.
Legislation passed by the General Assembly this past session requires police agencies to note in their reports if a student is involved in a crime.
UGA supported the bill, “and it stands to reason that we’ll consider including those statistics once the statistics become available,” Mr. Jackson said.
Safe Campuses Now was founded in 1990 by UGA graduate Dana Getzinger, who was stabbed in the heart in January 1988 by a would-be rapist in her off-campus apartment.
The organization has been publishing weekly campus crime statistics in school newspapers, because the university doesn’t.
Ms. Getzinger, 23, said 409 crimes — some of which were violent — were committed against students both on and off campus in a nine-week period during the 1991 spring quarter — three times the number of reported on-campus crimes. Those statistics could not be confirmed today.
“The demographics of a college town are so unique,” Ms. Getzinger said. “It’s their first time away from home. They’re so naive, so trusting. It’s a social environment, and they need that extra attention providing them with information.”
Safe Campuses Now also wants to start a rating program of all student housing on and off the UGA campus and eventually print a map showing high crime areas.
“Some student apartments are built the bottom of the line,” Ms. Getzinger said. “Our problem in a college town is that master keys circulate widely because students are moving in and out constantly.”
Ms. Getzinger was attacked by a man wearing a ski mask and gloves who came into her apartment through a sliding glass door. He was never caught.
But it wasn’t until she testified before a congressional hearing in 1990 on behalf of a bill mandating schools to report on-campus crime statistics that student safety became the focus of her life.
“I was the only surviving victim,” Ms. Getzinger said. “The rest were all parents wearing buttons with pictures of their murdered children.”
[Photo caption] Athens-Clarke County police and GBI officers confer Thursday night outside the downtown Athens house where University of Georgia student Jennifer Lynn Stone was found slain. (The Associated Press)