By HAYLEE BATES, Student Reporter
After arriving home, she goes to get her mail only to realize that her cell phone bill is missing.
Her cell phone bill is always waiting for her on the second day of every month. She decides not to worry too much about it; it would come within the week. The end of the week comes, and she still hasn’t received it.
She calls her service provider, and they inform her that her cell phone bill has already been sent out for the month. A wave of panic flows through her body.
This occurrence is how some stalkers instill fear into their victims. They can keep tabs on their victims by going through their mail, placing audio recording devices in their homes and installing GPS tracking apps on their phone to follow them throughout the day.
According to the National Center for Victims of Crime, 6.6 million people are stalked in one year. This number includes one of every six women and one of every 19 men.
Joel Johnson, campus police chief at Northwestern, said, stalking is when two people go on a walk but only one person knows about it.
Johnson said for a person’s behavior to be considered stalking under the law there has to be three elements that occur: there has to be criminal intent, there has to be fear in the mind of the victim and there has to be a pattern of repeated behavior. A case does not have to meet all three of these elements to be reported though.
According to Paul Mullen’s typology, there are five different types of stalkers: the predatory stalker, the incompetent stalker, the resentful stalker, the rejected stalker and the intimacy stalker. Each of these stalkers has different motivations and intentions behind their actions.
All cases of stalking on college campuses have to be reported in the annual security and fire safety report. Northwestern’s annual security and fire safety report can be found on the university’s website at www.nwosu.edu/campus-safety.
We have not had any confirmed or verified reports of stalking on Northwestern’s campus, Johnson said.
Even though Northwestern has not had any confirmed stalking cases, Johnson hosts trainings to make sure that his staff is prepared if a case does occur. He has taught courses on stalking to different police forces in the state of Oklahoma.
If a student ever feels like they are a victim of stalking, they need to contact campus police as soon as possible. They will help the victim fill out a detailed profile on the person they feel is stalking them. Campus police with also fill out two state of mind assessments: one on the victim and one on the stalker.
After the paperwork is filled out, campus police with form a diagnostic impression to help determine the level of threat. From there, campus police will develop an intervention strategy on how to approach the suspect.
For help or more information on stalking training, students can call campus police at (580) 327-8511, or students can visit the campus police office located in the student center.