A student in Maxwell House who has been active in educating her peers about sexual assault received a threatening note from an unknown person Thursday night. The note, written on the back of an anti-sexual assault poster she had designed and painted, read: "Your signs will not stop this me."
The cryptic warning came less than a week after students discovered two graffiti notes in Perkins Library and the West-Edens Link referencing rape. The victim, who asked to remain anonymous, said police told her they believe the WEL graffiti and Thursday's incident are connected but the Perkins scrawling is probably unrelated.
Administrators were officially mute on the issue, as Duke University Police Department Maj. Phyllis Cooper declined to speak with The Chronicle Thursday night and Assistant Dean of Students Deb LoBiondo also declined to comment.
However, the victim said that police have already begun an investigation of Thursday's note, focusing on handwriting analysis.
The victim said she had no idea whether the note was intended as a serious threat or not. "I think the fact that someone's willing to do this shows that something's fundamentally wrong on our campus," she said. "If it's a joke and you don't realize the impact it has on, in particular, the female population on this campus [and], in particular, a female, that [behavior] needs to be expelled [from] our campus. It shouldn't be tolerated."
The perpetrator's writing material was a sign that the victim had made and left outside her door, which the perpetrator then slipped under her door. The signs had been painted in response to the earlier graffiti in a bathroom in the WEL, where Maxwell House is located. That graffiti read: "I rape more and more."
Thursday's incident became the focus of a meeting in the WEL that was originally scheduled to discuss the two prior graffiti incidents. LoBiondo was in attendance.
Following the incident, the victim said she removed all the anti-sexual assault signs she had hung around the WEL because of fear and in order to keep other students out of danger. She added she would be much less public if she wanted to spread sexual assault awareness in the future.
The victim said she hoped the perpetrator would be found and punished severely. "He should be charged; he should be expelled completely from this school," she said. "It's ridiculous, it's beyond a middle school joke--I mean it's sick. We're held to a standard at this school, and it's something that shouldn't just include academics. It should include maturity. People like that do not belong at this school."
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