What happened at pick-ups?

Residential college advisers have convened a public meeting tonight with University health and Public Safety officials after they learned of a troubling series of events involving a large number of alcohol abuse incidents and possibly multiple cases of sexual assault during eating club pickups and initiations, the student advisers said.

Alternately referred to as "Princetonians Gone Wild: A Closer Look at Initiations" and "The Real Story of Pick-Ups," the event is scheduled for 9 p.m. today in the Wilcox Commons.

It will begin with a panel discussion and question-and-answer session expected to include representatives from University Health Services (UHS) and Public Safety. Afterward, the officials will leave and the discussion will continue with "frank, UNCENSORED student-only discussion run by a bicker club president, an EMT, a SHA and an RCA," according to the organizers' email.

Health and Public Safety officials recently met with residential college masters to discuss the events of initiations and pickups, when new members celebrate joining their eating clubs. The masters have told some of their residential college advisers (RCAs) about the developments.

In all, there were 19 incidents over the weekend of Feb. 11, all but one of them involving alcohol, according to a list compiled by Public Safety and released to The Daily Princetonian by Wilson College Master Marguerite Browning. They included cases of students vomiting and numerous trips to McCosh Health Center and the University Medical Center at Princeton.

Several RCAs, both in Wilson and other colleges, said they had learned that there had been multiple alleged sexual assaults. Local authorities have already said they have learned of one alleged assault that occurred at Tiger Inn and said yesterday that the investigation is ongoing and no others have been reported.

University health professionals frequently say that the number of sexual assaults that occur on campus is usually greatly underreported to authorities. Officials generally declined to release other statistics about the weekend, citing privacy concerns.

In their meeting, the UHS and Public Safety officials told the masters that this year was "an unprecedented bad Bicker season" in terms of crimes and illness, one RCA who was briefed by his college's master said.

"In a way, the Bicker process magnifies the problem of sexual misconduct — it's a perfect storm," Chief Medical Officer Daniel Silverman said in an interview, repeating a turn of phrase he reportedly used when speaking before the college masters. "The celebratory aspects of getting in, combined with peer pressure, create circumstances that can put students at risk."

"All rolled together with input from Public Safety and the deans and other sources, it might be that this year was an unusually boisterous Bicker," he added.

"This year we became concerned about the number of incidents Public Safety became involved in," Public Safety director Steven Healy said. The behavior Public Safety officers saw during club pickups and initiations was "not just unacceptable, but often illegal," setting off a series of investigations by the University.

Healy did not immediately have data available to compare the number and nature of reports received this February with those of previous years.

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Silverman and Healy are both expected to participate in tonight's panel discussion on alcohol abuse, sexual assault and the eating clubs. Both said they plan to address concerns raised by this year's pickups and initiations activities, as well as answer questions posed by students. But, Silverman added, "we won't be able to give discrete statistics" about sexual assaults.

In an email yesterday, Browning said she could not tell "the real story on what did or didn't happen during pickups and initiations" because only "the students who were there" and "the nurses and doctors at McCosh and the Public Safety officers who deal with this on a weekly basis" know what really happened.

At a meeting last week, Browning informed Wilson RCAs of what she knew regarding the incidents that occurred during the weekend of club pickups and initiations. The group was very concerned, said two RCAs, Catherine Cushenberry '07 and Sarah Erickson '07. Browning "made a commitment to keeping people informed. She realizes that there's a danger in having a lack of information," Cushenberry said.

Wilson RCA and former USG president Leslie-Bernard Joseph '06 expressed outrage over the reluctance of the administration to specifically discuss what happened during pickups and initiations.

"Even though this happened over a month ago," he said in an unpublished guest column submitted to the 'Prince.' "The University has sat on knowledge of this information. Quietly. For fear of bad press and negative stories about Princeton ending up all over the media, they would rather you not know about this."

ICC president Marco Fossati-Bellani '07 said he was unaware of the goals of the panel, and cautioned that people should be careful not to exaggerate reports of what happened at the clubs. "These are very, very isolated incidents," he said. "To blame the clubs in general for fostering this sort of behavior is way out of line."

Fossati-Bellani added, however, that he and the ICC are "serious" about the reports and the issue of sexual assault on campus, "as we should be as an organization."

Cushenberry and Erickson said they plan to begin a campaign to build awareness about sexual assaults and alcohol abuse on campus. Following the meeting tonight, they will solicit the participation of students interested in organizing awareness activities.

"There's sort of a pervading culture, 'It's Princeton, nothing's going to happen, everything's fine,' " Erickson said. "That leads people to be less likely to ... watch out for their friends or take care of each other or notice when things that are happening aren't necessarily OK or appropriate for the situation."

Another Wilson RCA, Caitlin Sullivan '07, wrote in an email that, "Community knowledge of what is happening on campus ... is the necessary foundation to support awareness training that prevents future occurrences. Ignoring the problem is not going to make it go away."

Princetonian Staff Writers Michael Juel-Larsen and Matt Davis contributed reporting to this article.