One night recently, while my resident assistant was making cookies in the common room, a conversation I was listening in on turned to rape and the criminal – or criminals – known as the “Georgetown Cuddler.” The Georgetown community has undergone a minor bashing in the media about the inappropriate nature of the moniker – that is, the trivialization through words of an extreme form of harassment.

Ironically, the majority of Google search results for “Georgetown Cuddler” lament the name and not the acts. One of my favorite blogs, Jezebel, abandoned its usual straightforward coverage of serious women’s issues in order to compare the perpetrator to Edward Cullen, of the maudlin and mildly disturbing “Twilight” series. The focus on the name has taken attention away from the true issue: the undeniably heinous acts that have been committed against female members of our community.

As a woman living at Georgetown, I don’t find the “Cuddler” amusing in any way, nor does anyone else I know. If there is still a student who uses the nickname in a joking manner, I invite him or her to e-mail me; I would love to meet for coffee and a chat. This has progressed beyond an issue of women’s safety on this campus to a minor press scandal, yet it’s difficult to discern the actual number of assaults due to the varied terminology in Public Safety Alerts.

I understand the trepidation on the part of the Metropolitan Police Department and the Department of Public Safety to name some of the incidents as sexual assaults or harassment, but if a stranger were to enter my home – and my physical space – without permission, I would consider that more than just a break-in or a burglary. Even the acts that do not involve physical contact border on assault and, from the piecemeal descriptions that students have received about suspected “Cuddler” attacks, it sounds as though sexual harassment is the correct terminology.

As mild as the description of a past incident – in which a strange male placed a blanket over a sleeping woman – may seem, it is still an incredible violation of personal space and security. Indeed, the intimate nature of the act of sleeping makes the harassments all the more frightening.

It should be difficult to violate this many women in such a small geographical area, but the nature of weekend nights in college, especially Georgetown, makes it easy. Living on campus, I feel relatively safe walking home alone, but most people I know (I’m including myself in this) have wandered away from an off-campus party, perhaps walked from Burleith to West Georgetown alone and completely forgotten the buddy system we all learned in elementary school.

In the midst of all the H1N1 virus furor, campus has become covered with badly photo-shopped pictures of Jack the Bulldog begging sick students to stay in their rooms. Imagine if, next to every poster reminding students to wash their hands frequently and cover their mouths while coughing, there were placards prompting them to lock their doors and not let people without GOCards into residence halls.

If RAs for the townhouses, Henle, Villages A and Alumni Square more frequently reminded their residents to secure their windows and doors, perhaps some assaults could be prevented. The modus operandi of the “Cuddler” – entering unlocked doors and windows and approaching sleeping students – is terrifying in a neighborhood with a high concentration of college students.

The university, in collaboration with MPD and DPS, has an obligation to keep students informed about potential threats to our safety and the proper responses to said threats. The freak-outs over norovirus and swine flu overwhelmed the campus with informational posters and, although the “Cuddler” affects fewer people than those illnesses, this situation is more disturbing and dangerous on a psychological level.

An emphasis on student safety and constant visual reminders of the importance of locking doors and not walking around alone could help prevent future issues. Instead of focusing solely on preventing the spread of H1N1 virus, Georgetown should be reminding students how to avoid becoming the next victim in this series of assaults.

Whitney McAniff is a sophomore in the College. The 52 Percent appears every other Tuesday.