University Police report two incidents of domestic violence on campus

February 18, 2008 —

A domestic violence case last week in the First Year Suites was investigated further by University Police.

According to police, a student assaulted her younger sister, a minor, who was visiting.

"There were some issues with her not obeying her older sister," University Police Chief Ron Trepkowski said. "Whether she did it willingly or whether she was egging on her sister, but ... her sister got upset and ended up getting in a fight with her."

According to Trepkowski, the student was arrested and the younger sister was taken to St. Mary's hospital to receive some care for bruises and a cut.

The student was charged with domestic assault, a misdemeanor, and is currently out on bail. The court hearing is scheduled for next month. Trepkowski believes the student's punishment pay is minor, but this depeonds on her past police record.

"We ended up arresting her for domestic assault because the sister was beat up," Trepkowski said. "Now, they will handle that internally as well. What we do is we just do our paperwork and then the prosecutor will file a complaint, issue a warrant."

Residential Life also took action.

"SVSU has an extremely low tolerance and high expectation for students not to become engaged in forms of physical aggression of any sort," Director of Residential Life Merry Jo Brandimore said. "We do have conflict and difference of opinion at SVSU and I think that in an intellectual framework that is completely appropriate. But, when people act out physically then it becomes a really different issue."

Brandimore said that she believes that the student is not a threat to the campus community.

"In our interpretation of this particular incident, in no way would this individual be a threat to the community," she said. "It was not a generalized action; it was clearly an isolated circumstance between two people who have lived together their whole life and had an uncomfortable occurrence that happened because of their life history."

According to Brandimore, SVSU has seen some violence, but it is still quite rare.

"In terms of my experience when I started here in 1983, I had people involved in fist to cuffs," she said. "We had some really outlandish kinds of things happen between people then and I don't know if the frequency has increased, so it's still quite rare. I think students that come here have a really good approach to understanding their roll and mediating those kinds of things."

Brandimore said that the increased number of freshmen might explain a change in the frequency of such events.

An incident also occurred last week involving a female student and her boyfriend. According to the report, the boyfriend assaulted the female student and made her stay in her on-campus bedroom.

There has been further investigation into the case. It was originally reported that the female student went to the University Police to get a personal protection order.

The police gave her information on how to obtain one, but she never even started the process to get one.

Trepkowski said the relationship between the student and the boyfriend is confusing due to the student's contradictory behavior following the assault.

"When it was originally reported to us, she said the guy grabbed her, kind of kept her in her room and she was afraid to leave and that type of thing," he said.

"Since then, we found out the following weekend the guy came up and she went down to visit him at his home for two days."

There have also been reports filed by roommates and neighbors. They said they have been receiving phone calls from the boyfriend in question trying to get a hold of the female student.

"This guy has now called people across the hall wanting to speak with her," Trepkowski said. "The people across the hall and her roommates are getting tired of this guy calling all the time."

ResLife has prohibited the boyfriend from entering campus.

"There was a time when this person was allowed to come to campus," Brandimore said. "He is no longer allowed to visit her."