- Publication: The Red and Black (University of Georgia student newspaper)
- Author: Robert Haag, Staff Writer
- Original Publication Date: Monday, April 27, 1992
The slaying of Jennifer Stone Thursday has sparked student fears, prompting them to seek counseling, said David Fletcher, assistant to the vice president of Student Affairs.
Several friends of Stone sought counseling Friday at the Mental Health division of the Gilbert Health Center and many other students are expected to come to the mental health clinic today and Tuesday.
The clinic will provide extra staff for two walk-in sessions today and Tuesday.
“They’re pulling in all the folks,” Fletcher said. “There are a number of students who are affected.”
Fletcher spoke to students Friday in one of Stone’s classes.
Fletcher said students who want to discuss the death can go — on a walk-in basis — to the Gilbert Heath Center from 10 to 11 a.m., or from 4 to 5 p.m. today or Tuesday.
To some, Stone’s death was more evidence that colleges are not as safe as administrators would want students to believe.
Safe Campuses Now, an organization dedicated to helping college students learn more about the dangers of campus life, was founded by University graduate Dana Getzinger.
Getzinger was a University sophomore when she was stabbed in her Athens condominium on Jan. 17, 1988. Her attacker, who entered her home at Dearing Courtyard, was never apprehended.
Getzinger, 23, has helped open Safe Campuses Now chapters at the University of Florida and the University of Tennessee. Getzinger testified in 1990 before a congressional hearing on campus crime. Her testimony helped pass the Clery bill, which requires colleges to release on-campus crime statistics.
The violent crime statistics compiled by Georgia colleges and universities will be more accessible because of recent legislation passed in the Georgia General Assembly.
The new bill will require officers to identify, on the police report, whether a victim is a student and, if so, to name the victim’s school.
In the past, crimes that occurred to students off campus were not released by universities; schools were only required to report crimes that occur on campus.
Dave Blount, director of Athens Chapter of Safe Campuses Now, said the organization is stepping up plans to start a security inspection program in response to the Stone slaying. As part of the program, volunteers would inspect homes for security measures upon request.
The Stone slaying was the second involving a University student in the past 10 years.
Donna Lynn Allen was killed on Dec. 21, 1983 on her way from her downtown job to her car parked in the Chandler Hall lot. She was stabbed three times while walking behind the University Chapel by Warren Reid Hall, an Ila man who confessed to the killing during a three-and-a-half-hour police interrogation. Hall was convicted in 1984 and is serving a life sentence.
At the time of the killing, Hall was under treatment at the University’s Psychology Clinic where workers said he displayed dangerous behavior and fantasized about raping women. Allen’s parents, J.C. and Bernice, filed a $3 million lawsuit against the University and the Board of Regents. They lost the suit in 1986.
Another high-profile Athens murder involved the slaying of two retired University professors, Glen and Rachel Sutton, by a 16-year-old in April of 1987. Clifford Bankston killed the elderly couple and three others in the Sutton’s Oglethorpe Avenue home.
Bankston was convicted of the five murders in May of 1988 and was sentenced to five consecutive life terms.
[Pull quote] The Stone slaying was the second involving a University student in the past 10 years.