Students respond to All-Campus meeting

Members of the student body felt mixed emotions after the all-campus meeting held by President Randy Rhine held at 11 a.m., Friday in the Student Center Ballroom. 

“I think overall it went OK,” Nate Cronin, senior of Fort Pierre, South Dakota, former Student Senate chief justice said. “It could’ve been a lot better, could’ve went a lot worse. I think the biggest issue was a lot of the students are upset, they are hurt because the school even considered this. Devil’s advocate, maybe they didn’t know, but I think a lot of the students that I’ve talked to just want to hear that the school may or may not have screwed up and that they’re taking responsibility for that. But they really didn’t get that out of the meeting.” 

During the meeting, Rhine further discussed the letter he had sent Thursday and addressed issues of sexual assault cases surrounding the college. After his statement, students spoke up by asking questions and voicing their concerns. 

Cynthia Clark, 24, senior of Scottsbluff, spoke up about two separate cases of alleged sexual assault, one in 2015 and one in 2016, along with the two recent cases.  

“How can we as students ensure that we are safe on campus when this is no longer just an accident, it’s becoming a pattern behavior?” She asked during the all-campus meeting. 

Clark said she was a little disappointed with the meeting. 

“I was hoping to have any sort of accountability or even the notion that they were handling it and I didn’t feel like I got that,” she said. 

During the meeting, Corey Griffin, junior of Omaha, asked about the possibility of requiring classes or academic sessions regarding sexual assault, while Rachel Bell, freshman of Miles City, Montana, brought people’s attention to recognizing that men get sexually assaulted too. 

“Women are not the only victims of sexual assault,” she said. “I find that very important. A lot of them are scared to speak out because ‘oh, you’re a man that can’t happen to you,’ but we need to support our male students just as much as we support our female students.” 

It wasn’t just the students attending the meeting in person who voiced their questions and concerns. Students’ messages through the Zoom chat were also addressed by Rhine. 

Students were speaking up in the meeting but also sending messages through the Zoom chat which some were addressed by Rhine. 

 “First of all, I was really proud of the other students for coming out and voicing their opinions as well,” Clark said. “It seemed to me that the president didn’t seem prepared for that, and the takeaway was that this happened really, really fast and he wasn’t prepared.”