Rapes Spotlight Security Issues

This week two men allegedly raped a Business School student and her female guest inside the student's Gallatin Hall room.

At about 1 a.m. on Saturday, the two assailants accosted the student and her male escort--also a B-School student--as they returned to the dorm, forcing the two at knifepoint inside to the victim's room, where another woman was staying, police sources said.

After forcing the male escort to strip, the two assailants allegedly raped the two women and then forced them to dress and carry some of their valuables to a car.

University and MIT police, responding to the call, chased the assailants' car down Mass Ave. to the B.U. bridge on Memorial Drive, where the car crashed after its axle broke, sources said.

Police arrested one of the assailants, losing the other during a foot chase. Davis J. Davis, a 19-year-old from Dorchester, was arraigned in Brighton District Court on charges of rape, assault with a deadly weapon and robbery. Police are still searching for the second man, whom they believe is no longer in this area.

In response to the rapes, the B-School has hired, independent of the University police, a 24-hour security guard to patrol the B-School on foot. The new policeman joins a Harvard police cruiser assigned to the school.

The incident has given a new sense of urgency to the need for establishing a special division in the police to handle rapes, Saul L. Chafin, chief of University police, says.

Since his arrival at the University two years ago, Chafin has tried to set up a Sensitive Crime Unit, trained specifically to handle rapes.

He said yesterday the new group should begin working at the end of next week, after the department's two female officers--hired this year--return from special training.

Community pressures following the rapes may well be influencing Chafin's haste in setting up the new group. This week, Students Organized for Security, a group seeking to improve campus security, held its first organizational meeting. Students at the meeting, which Chafin attended, expressed concern over the adequacy of the present protection for students on campus.

What future precautions the police may adopt in response to Saturday's incident remain unclear. Community pressure, however, makes it more likely that police will pay more attention to preventing future rapes.