Early Sunday morning, “a group of five to seven black males ranging in age from 20-25 years old” assaulted seven Columbia students— five of whom were Asian—in the span of fifteen minutes.

According to the Columbia Department of Public Safety, only one of the victims was robbed during the attack, but all of them sustained physical injuries, including two who required stitches.

Instead of immediately sending an e-mail alert to the entire CU community, however, Public Safety elected to keep quiet about the incident. The only students who received an alert – at the time of this article's publication – were those enrolled in the Law School and Barnard.

Why keep quiet? Don’t all students deserve to know when a spree of assaults occurs right outside the protective gates of their campus?

To make matters worse, Marjorie Cohen, executive director of the Westside Crime Prevention Program, suggests that the victims might be to blame.

The Columbia Spectator reports:

Though she cautioned against “blaming the victim,” she said often students are “are not paying attention when out walking.”

“The cell phones and the iPods are a problem because people are just not concentrating,” Cohen said.

No, you’re wrong. It doesn’t take much concentration to see seven men approaching you, so that isn't the issue.

Clearly, the attackers had an agenda, and no amount of attentiveness was going to stop them.