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Here's the story from the Seattle Times..
It's school as usual at UW, despite attack on campus
By Ray Rivera
Seattle Times staff reporter
The elegant, red-brick building that houses Zeta Tau Alpha sorority sits on a leafy street that shoots almost directly onto the University of Washington campus.
Yesterday, the first day of the fall quarter, the street was bustling with students, backpacks slung over their shoulders, hustling to and from class. Fraternity brothers sat on concrete steps of their houses in shorts and T-shirts, flirting with passing students and taking in the warm weather. Sorority pledges walked somewhat timidly around their new neighborhood.
If Norman Rockwell were to paint a college scene today, it might look like this.
It's easy to forget that these students, many of them away from home for the first time, live in one of the worst crime areas of the city.
They got an alarming reminder over the weekend when an 18-year-old woman at Zeta Tau Alpha sorority house was attacked in her room early Saturday morning in an apparent rape attempt.
Her assailant remains on the loose.
"It's scary to think that I can't crack my window for air at night because some guy might sneak in and attack," said Megan Cieplik, 19, as she and a roommate sat outside their apartment a few doors away from the Zeta house.
The victim was treated and released from the UW Medical Center. Neither police nor the hospital would disclose the extent of her injuries, except that she had facial injuries.
Anyone with information can contact Seattle police Detective Robert Howard at 206-684-5495.
The sorority, meanwhile, has remained mum about the incident, stating that its national advisers would issue a news release within the next few days.
UW officials have taken several steps over the years to ensure student safety, including spending more than $1 million in the last decade to add more than 1,000 lampposts on campus, and 54 security and code-blue phones to give students quick access to the campus security escort service and police, said Ernest Morris, UW vice president of student affairs.
Painful reminders of crime
Students received tragic reminders of violence earlier this year when, first, a popular freshman was shot and killed by a pizza delivery man after he walked across the hood of the driver's car on University Way Northeast.
Two months later, a second-year pathology resident, distraught at being terminated, gunned down his mentor at the UW Medical School, world-renowned pathologist Rodger Haggit, then turned the gun on himself.
The second event brought new urgency to issues of workplace violence at the university. A committee headed by UW police Capt. Jon Broulette is expected to release a set of recommendations to the Campus Safety Advisory Committee within this week.
While slayings are rare at and around the university, statistics compiled by the Seattle Police Department and analyzed by The Seattle Times show that total crime in the neighborhoods adjacent to the UW campus are in the upper echelon of the city's worst crime areas, behind only downtown, Belltown and the Northgate Mall area.
Police track crime in the city by census tracts, areas with populations of roughly 4,000 people each. The UW campus is its own tract. Adjacent to it is Tract 5301, which includes most of Greek Row and a long stretch of University Way Northeast from Northeast 41st Street to Northeast 50th Street, the students' main shopping and dining strip, also known as "The Ave."
Assaults, burglaries, thefts and auto thefts make up the brunt of the crimes.
Between 1996 and this June, police reported:
823 aggravated and non-aggravated assaults, ranking the tract 12th in the city out of more than 120 tracts.
493 residential and non-residential burglaries, ranking it ninth in the city.
207 robberies, ranking it fifth.
3,697 thefts, again fifth in the city.
In the total number of slayings, the area is near the bottom, and in rapes it is 25th.
Overall, campus police and most students consider the area safe.
"I won't go out and hang out alone at The Ave at night, but if I'm with someone, I feel safe," said Andrea Munro, a 19-year-old sophomore.
Comparing student safety at the UW to other comparable schools is tricky. Beginning in 1998, federal law required campuses to include crime statistics from contiguous areas around the campus. But deciding those boundaries and finding ways to accurately track crime in them has been met with mixed success.
UW police, for example, find it hard to believe that the University of Southern California, in the middle of South Central Los Angeles, has less crime than the UW. In 1998, for example, USC reported four assaults, the UW 93.
Ray Rivera's phone message number is 206-464-2926. His e-mail address
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