Editor’s note: Starting Tuesday and continuing on Wednesday, The Daily Illini is examining public safety on campus — specifically, the effectiveness and use of safety whistles, or “rape whistles.”
The presence of safety whistles, often called “rape whistles,” has been well established on campus. But their call has not resonated in the same respect, as many students have never heard their sound and many others do not carry one.
“Do they sound different (from other whistles)?” asked Christina Coy, sophomore in LAS. “I’ve never even heard one.”
Coy is not alone.
Students are forbidden from sounding the instruments outside of an emergency. Punishments range from flexible fines to a firm lecture from campus or Certified Private Housing management through which the whistles are distributed. This can lead to a lack of preparation in the face of real emergencies.
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And what about students like Coy who present yet another obstacle associated with the distribution of these whistles? She never received one.
Coy represents a sizable but undocumented population of students who are by no means ignored.
“It’s just the break down in the distribution,” said Jennifer Crum, assistant director at the Office of Dean of Students. “Whether a student chooses not to pick one up their freshman year and then by their junior year they say they never got one, I can’t say.”
Crum said that while the Office of the Dean of Students used to only order enough whistles for every female incoming freshman.
However, this year, “every student gets one.”
Crum said that most crimes reported involve assault to men, and that whistles have always been and will continue to be available for pick up at the Office of the Dean of Students.
The whistles are also not exclusively for rape situations, said Crum, who tells students that the whistles themselves are not going to prevent anything, but the people who carry them can.
“How does this stop rape?” she said, “It doesn’t. It’s just a tool to have.”
Illinois is one of many universities that participate in “bystander involvement” through the Whistle-Stop program, said Jennifer Scott, sexual assault education coordinator at the Women’s Resource Center.
This year, the University chose to disseminate a new model of whistle in the hopes that more students will carry it with them.
“Our thinking was that they (the new models) would fit easier in your pocket than the old ones, which are heavy and bulky,” said Belinda DeLaRosa, special assistant to the Dean of Students who ordered the whistles for this academic school year.
The model purchased in years past is manufactured in the United States and is solid brass, with nickel-chrome plating.
This year, the Illinois-stamped blue metal whistles made by Public Identity are “slimmer, trimmer, (and) more modern,” DeLaRosa said.
