Brown and White Vol. 131 no. 24

              The Brown and White Vol. 131 No. 24
Friday, December 9, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Roshan Giyanani/B&W Staff
Sexual assault survivors dissuaded by reporting process
By SAMANTHA TOMASZEWSKI
Editor in Chief
Lehigh police and university offi-cials
say they know sexual assault
is happening at a greater rate
than campus statistics indicate,
but they call it an underreported
crime.
Some survivors, however, have
indicated the reporting process and
procedures may be discouraging
more students from coming for-ward
to report these crimes.
LUPD reported three sexual
assaults in 2015, which falls in
stark contrast with the national
statistic that one in five women
will experience sexual assault
while at college.
All three reported cases were
rapes. LUPD tracks but recorded
no incidents of fondling, statuto-ry
rape, domestic violence, dating
violence, incest, stalking or sex
offenses.
If every person who experienced
sexual assault at Lehigh reported
the crime, the statistic should be
closer to 450 women reporting,
trusting the one-in-five statistic.
“I will say that sexual assault
is probably the most underreport-ed
crime,” LUPD Chief Edward
Shupp said. “We can only respond
to the complaints that we do have,
and we don’t get a lot of complaints
on it, unfortunately.”
These crime statistics also only
reflect crimes that happen within
the boundaries of Lehigh’s cam-pus.
Bethlehem Police Chief Mark
DiLuzio said if a student is sexual-ly
assaulted off campus his depart-ment
will handle the case.
The criminal definition of what is
considered sexual assault is a con-tributing
factor to this small num-ber,
according to Karen Salvemini,
Lehigh’s equal opportunity compli-
Campus discusses recycling, waste removal progress
By AUSTIN VITELLI
Managing Editor
Lehigh has progressed in its sustainability
efforts since they began more than 25 years ago
What started in 1971 as a small
recycling project for old newspa-pers
in Dravo and Richards dorms
catapulted Lehigh into cam-pus-
wide efforts to improve sus-tainability.
Among the initiatives Lehigh
has established over the years,
it has instilled a more intensive
recycling and waste diversion
program, attempted to combat
issues with students’ recycling
habits and added education for
those topics through the Office of
Sustainability.
Gary Falasca, the director of
facilities services, said the first
major efforts toward recycling on
campus began in 1991 for comput-er
paper. A small group of people
would place collection trays for
recycling on office desks.
A September 1990 issue of The
Brown and White mentions Lehigh
purchasing 350 recycling bins to
distribute throughout campus.
Now in 2016, Lehigh has reached
the point of measuring its diver-sion
rate — the amount of waste
diverted from landfills or inciner-ators
to recycling plants.
Lehigh’s single-stream recycling
rate was 25.3 percent in 2015,
and its total diversion rate, which
includes all forms of recycling,
donated materials and compost-ing,
was 49.8 percent. For compar-ison,
the diversion rate was 41.0
percent in 2014.
Colorado State University
achieved an 83.4 percent waste
diversion rate in 2015, one of the
highest in the country. At a glance
of a dozen peer institutions of
similar size, however, Lehigh’s
diversion rate is higher than the
average.
Lehigh’s trash and recycling pol-icies
are mostly handled by facili-ties
services, but Bethlehem laws
shape many policies, too. Falasca
said some final decisions are made
by Provost Pat Farrell and Patricia
Johnson, the vice president of
finance and administration.
Many people involved in Lehigh’s
sustainability programs believe
educating the campus, specifically
first-year students, on the topic
is the first step in continuing to
improve in the school’s sustain-ability.
Dana Pierce, ’18, a Greek Eco-
Rep coordinator at Lehigh, said
the lack of communication about
what should go where often leads
to problems with recycling. She
thinks most of the blame falls on
the students.
“They don’t know, they’re not
informed, or they just don’t care,
which is even worse,” Pierce said.
Paola Lopez, ’20, said she fre-quently
sees both the trash and
recycling bins overflowing with the
See ASSAULT Page 2
See RECYCLING Page 4