String Of Stanford Students Report Possible Date Rape Drugging
STANFORD (KPIX 5) -- Two Stanford University students reported being possible victims of the date rape drug over the weekend, a campus spokesperson confirmed Monday.
On Saturday, a Stanford woman said she had a reaction that was "unfamiliar" to her after drinking a pumpkin spice latte. In a separate incident, a Stanford woman reported that she believed she had been drugged after drinking alcohol and consuming marijuana on Friday.
A Stanford spokesperson said in an email that "the Department of Public Safety does not have evidence to confirm if there has been a verified incident of drugging." The email went on to say that police are asking students with information about the incidents to come forward.
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The two cases are just a part of a string of reports from students who believed they had become victims of drugging. In the last six weeks, there have been six such cases. In the first incident reported, a female student tested positive for the date rape drug.
"I was like, 'Again,'" said Stanford freshman Carmen Duran. "They've sent out a crazy amount of them (alerts) and I was just like, 'Wow, they haven't really done anything to stop it.'"
A Stanford Ph.D. student who didn't want to give out his name told KPIX that he worked for a student service that gave safe rides to peers on campus for four years as an undergraduate in 2015.
He said by law, they would have to report crimes, but many times it could take weeks or months before students learned about an incident.
He said that has changed, however, and that Stanford University now pushes the alerts immediately after an incident is reported.
"We're sold this narrative that it's safe and it's up to the university to uphold that," he said. "Obviously, there's things that need to be fixed and so I think this is the step in the right direction to do that. The more information that students have, the more informed they can make their decisions," the student said.
But Duran believes there's still room for improvement.
"I definitely think the administration should do more to making sure that students feel safe on campus," she said.
In 2018, a Stanford fraternity lost its charter after more than a dozen people were drugged at a party.
