Fears Largely Ignored As FGCU Women Feel Targeted
Most people around the country will hear the name Florida Gulf Coast University and try to remember why it sounds familiar. The university first gained national notoriety thanks to their men’s basketball team making an improbable run in 2013’s NCAA March Madness tournament.
Unfortunately, the university may soon be associated with something more nefarious if concerns of some FGCU students are not addressed properly.
FGCU coeds living in off-campus housing have reported that many vehicles with sorority decals have X’s keyed into their hoods, in what many believe are preemptive markings of sex trafficking attempts. Instances of these markings have been increasingly shared across local social media groups.
According to an email sent out to students and staff on February 5th by the university, police found four vehicles with X’s keyed into their hoods at University Village, an apartment complex near the campus, after receiving a call from a resident. All four vehicles that were keyed had sorority decals on display.
The university’s police department has been publicly dismissive of the incidents, stating an, “There are no indications that this criminal mischief has anything to do with sex trafficking or rape.”
“While we don’t know why someone damaged various cars, it is more likely someone feels they have been wronged. Possibly this is related to a relationship issue, not being asked to join an organization, or some other perceived wrong,” UPD officials said.
The Lee County Sheriff’s office has not been as quick to discount the seriousness of the incidents, however.
In a late-January Facebook post, a resident in an off-campus student housing complex, said she was approached by the complex’s management and Lee County Sheriff’s deputies and was told that any sorority decals or any other “feminine looking” symbols should be removed from vehicles. Targeting by sex traffickers was specifically mentioned as the reason for the decal removal according to the post.
Reports by the National Human Trafficking Hotline, an organization that “connects victims and survivors of sex and labor trafficking with services and supports to get help and stay safe,” show that Florida has steadily ranked third among states for the most number of reported human trafficking cases on a yearly basis.
From 2015 to the end of 2019, the hotline received some form of communication (call, email, text) concerning well over 3,200 human trafficking cases in the state.
Polaris Project, the non-profit organization that operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline, reports that there was an 18% increase from 2018 to 2019 in the number of trafficking victims or survivors that contacted the hotline nationwide.
In the same set of data, Polaris Project found that of the 18,360 national human trafficking cases where gender was identified in 2019, nearly 83% of those victims were female.
The targeting of female college students by sex traffickers is not something new, unfortunately.
According to an April 13, 2018 post on the Arizona State University Police department’s Facebook page, ASU police warned that suspected sex traffickers were attending college parties and events in attempts to recruit or coerce female students into prostitution through various threats.
Adding to the fears of potential targeting by sex traffickers has been the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on students.
A September 2020 study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, a peer-reviewed journal for “health and healthcare in the internet age,” outlined the effects the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the mental health of college students.
Of the 195 students surveyed for the study, 71% said their levels of stress and anxiety had risen during the pandemic. Only 10% of those whose levels had increased said that they had used mental health services during that same period of time.
When asked about feelings of social isolation, 86% of respondents indicated that they had experienced some increase in the feeling, whether minor or severe.
Whether or not the UPD’s assessment that there is no targeting taking place is correct, the fact remains that a significant portion of the student body must now contend with additional stress placed on them during an already difficult time.
Simple steps like an increased patrol presence at night near off-campus housing and statements recognizing the impact of the potential threat on the community could go a long way towards mitigating the fears of students and help decrease anxiety levels.
