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Students assaulted at Mizzou fraternity amid growing safety concerns

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Police are in the middle of investigating a daring robbery that occurred in the early hours of Tuesday morning on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus when men stormed into the Phi Delta Theta fraternity armed with handguns.

Police would not disclose how much property was stolen or the nature of the property itself, but confirmed that between 2 and 3 men entered the fraternity armed with guns and attacked 2 fraternity members before robbing them.

Columbia Police Public Information Officer Bryana Maupin told local press that the crime is a reminder to students and locals to always lock their doors.

“We just saw a string of burglaries in different areas of town including hot spots where the common denominator was doors were being left open,” Maupin told KRCG 13. “In this incident, the door was left open.”

The incident comes as more students began to voice concerns about campus safety. Last month, a string of sexual assaults was reported and in a much publicized-incident, Columbia PD shot and killed an armed robbery suspect that hid inside a woman’s car and attempted to force her to drive away at gunpoint.

Missy Pinkerton-McDaniel, 15th ward Democratic committeewoman in St. Louis, told The Missouri Times that her own daughter was interested in attending Mizzou until she “researched on her own” the crime stats of the schools she was considering.

“She found Mizzou had more crimes against women than the other schools [she was looking at] combined,” Pinkerton-McDaniel said. “Her father is a Mizzou alum and would have loved for her to become a legacy at his school.”

Maddie McMillian, a MU student, told The Missouri Times that while Mizzou handles issues well once they arise, they struggle with prevention.

“They are getting better at the mass notifications,” McMillian said. “But why are we getting mass notifications, why can’t we prevent it from happening altogether?”

McMillian said she was “a lot more cautious” now in her junior year than she was when she first arrived on campus, based at least in part on the well-publicized safety issues.

Gunnar Johanson, another junior political science major at Mizzou, said that he thinks the school “excels” in proactive safety measures like the safe-ride programs and the emergency beacons on campus, but said the school’s alert system, MU Alert, is “a joking matter on campus.”

“The MU Alert system is flawed and inconsistent,” Johanson said. “So a question many are asking is where does the campus safety responsibility end and begin? How do they inform students of safety concerns without causing mass panic? Campus administration has to address all of these issues.”