As another report of sexual assault near Boston University emerges, the terrifying possibility of sex crime in neighborhoods apparently as safe as the Charles River Campus remains worthy of increased awareness and collective action. The five alleged sexual assaults reported to the BU Police Department this semester have all differed in circumstance. In each report, culpability must never be placed upon the victim of a sex crime, and the blame remains with those who perpetrate the heinous acts. However, it bears repeating that we, as students, must watch out for one another in potentially dangerous social situations, especially when there is drinking or drug use involved.

The willingness of BU students to come forward reporting assaults when they had been in bars or at parties — situations in which blame for an assault can easily, but wrongly, shift to the victim — is encouraging. Reporting a crime is the first step toward ensuring a victim’s own recovery. Each report is also a service to the victim’s peers, who might be potential victims of future assaults.

By raising police awareness and receptivity to reports, making administrators reconsider the punishment for alcohol violations in light of assault reports, forcing the university to take a hard, honest look at assault and, most importantly, informing fellow students of the risks around them through anonymous stories, alleged victims can help their peers and even aid law enforcement searching for sexual predators. According to the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, rape tends to be a recidivist crime, and each perpetrator commits an average of seven assaults.

Every student on campus must remain vigilant in the face of an apparent increase in assaults. Safety tips are all too familiar to students on college campuses, and yet sexual assault cases continue to happen. We must all heed the warnings of administrators and awareness groups and follow common-sense practices, for ourselves and our peers. In social situations, women and men must support each other and watch to make sure friends are in safe situations. The safety of our peers demands awareness and commonsense habits for group safety in social situations.