DE Since 1916
Daily Egyptian THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2015 VOLUME 99 ISSUE 12
10-day enrollment shows slight increase Jonathan Swartz
@jp_Swartz | Daily Egyptian
The campus’ spring enrollment increased by 65 students from last spring according to the university. Administration officials attributed the increase to investment in recruitment and retention plans, university spokeswoman Rae Goldsmith said. The sophomore class had the largest increase, rising 16.4 percent. Goldsmith said these results show
how the successful recruitment of freshmen last year has carried over to success in retaining those students this year. While junior class enrollment remained level, according to the university, numbers of off-campus increased 11.6 percent and transfer students grew 10.7 percent. Goldsmith said the only class to experience a drop in student enrollment this spring is the senior class. Year-to-year class enrollment of
seniors decreased by about 10 percent, she said. “There are pockets of improvement and pockets where we think we can do better,” Goldsmith said. “The good news here is that we’re holding our own after a number of years of decline.” Investments toward keeping freshmen at SIU have led to the development of a two-year rolling retention plan, Goldsmith said. Please see ENROLLMENT · 3
The culture behind the clippers
H oliday W agner • d aily e gyptian Patrick Greene, of Carbondale, gives an all even cut with a lining to his 7-year-old nephew Mikaden Greene on Tuesday at Uppercuts Barbershop. “I’ve actually been cutting a lot of people’s hair since they were kids. It’s kind of crazy because you see them grow from kids to men,” Greene said.
Tyler Davis
@TDavis_DE | Daily Egyptian
Conversations ranging from the Seahawks’ performance in the Super Bowl to a discussion about who meant most to the civil rights movement came to a crescendo as the hum of clippers provided a quiet baseline. These are the scenes and sounds in barbershops across America everyday. Barbershops, especially in
diverse communities like Carbondale, have been the go-to forum for African-Americans for decades. The Rev. Joseph Brown, a professor in Africana studies, said the treatment of black hair being a platform for conversation spans centuries, starting before slaves were captured and brought to America. “You always needed help to groom yourself so you are always going to have people, even in traditional west Africa, interacting with each
other and making grooming an opportunity to talk about other things,” he said. Joshua Spears, owner of Uppercuts barbershop located on the Strip, said people in his shop talk about a plethora of subjects. The shop is in the same building that formerly housed Blade Kings, which recently moved, and has been open for six months. Please see CULTURE · 6
Victim blaming may explain rape and sexual assault study Jessica Brown
@BrownJessicaJ | Daily Egyptian
College rapes in the U.S. decreased from 1995 to 2013, according to a study by the Department of Justice. Or have they? The December 2014 study states while the 18 to 24 year-old age group had the highest rate of rape and sexual assault victimizations in comparison to other age groups, non-students from 18 to 24 reported sexual assault at a rate 1.2 times greater than college students. However, Kandace Kellett-Riddle, a women, gender and sexuality studies instructor, is not convinced sexual assaults for non-students are more common than for students. “It doesn’t mean that rapes have gone down on college campuses,” she said. “All it could mean is that victims are
continuing not to report, and that’s a huge issue.” She said women choose not to report a sexual assault or rape for a variety of reasons. About 80 percent of college students interviewed for the Department of Justice study said they did not report an assault that occurred, as opposed to roughly 67 percent of non-students. The study also states 12 percent of student victims said they did not think the incident was important enough to report, while only 5 percent of non-student victims thought the same. “Last semester, in the first seven weeks of class, I had five young women who were either students that I knew, or whom a student had referred to me,
come up to me to report that they had been raped,” Kellett-Riddle said. As a campus employee, she is required by the Clery Act to report the sexual assaults to the university. Of those five women, just two of them had reported before coming to Kellett-Riddle. The assaults, though in Carbondale, did not take place on SIU property, she said. “One of them felt embarrassed because she knew and trusted the person,” Kellett-Riddle said of one of the rapes. “They were friends and he forced himself on her. One of them was drugged at a party off campus, one was assaulted by a group of guys while walking back to her home.” She said victim-blaming plays a major role in the failure to report. “Rape and sexual assault are the only
crimes where the perpetrator is thought to be innocent, and the victim is thought to be guilty,” Kellett-Riddle said. She said one reason women do not want to report is because when they do they are subjected to scrutiny in addition to the traumatic experience they underwent—especially on college campuses. Tyler Marvin, a freshman from Bradenton, Fla., studying aviation maintenance technology, said this may have to do with some of the activities students participate in on campus. “There’s a lot of drunkenness and disorderly conduct,” he said. “People think she deserved it or he deserved it because they’re just some stupid person who was drunk, but they were really just taken advantage of and are a victim of a crime.”
Other students believe administration and faculty play a role in failure to report assault. “They try to downplay it so they don’t get reported on the news or get a bad reputation for their school,” said Cailey Vandermark, a junior from Aurora studying zoology. Kellett-Riddle said reporting sexual crimes is necessary but gave advice to those who do not. “Women need to remember that this is not their fault, and they do need to report, because it is serious,” KellettRiddle said. “If you do choose not to report, however, at least seek help.” During this academic year, there have been seven sexual assaults reported according to the the Department of Public Safety daily crime log—none of which have occurred this semester.