Within the past couple years, it seems as though CU has had a lot of problems with sexual assaults occurring on campus and off-campus. The most recent of these accusations recently made headlines in the Daily Camera. According to the article, 19 year old CU Boulder student Zachary Orion Roper is facing a Class 4 felony sexual assault charge due to reportedly raping his date to a sorority date dash on January 31st of this year.
Source: Daily Camera
According to Mitchell Byers, who wrote the Daily Camera article, the arrest affidavit stated that the sorority date dash occurred in Loveland, and the members of the sorority, including the victim, were required to bring a date. The woman in question had never met Zachary Roper prior to the night of the date dash because she had been set up with him by her sorority sister. According to the article, she was drinking alone with Zachary Roper and other people attending the date dash before they headed up to Loveland and stated that she didn’t have a clear memory of what happened that night. The woman stated that the first thing she remembered after drinking before the date dash was waking up to Roper sexually assaulting her.
Source: The Roaming Boomers
According to other people who attended the date dash, the woman left in an Uber with Roper to be sent back to the sorority house, which was the sorority’s policy for heavy intoxication, but their Uber driver said to police that Roper changed the address from the sorority house to his apartment in the middle of the ride. One of her sorority sisters was told to expect her back at the house but ended up going to Roper’s apartment with other members of the sorority when she got the address from one of his friends. The sorority women told police that they ended up walking into Roper’s bedroom and found him sexually assaulting the woman and immediately rushed her to the hospital for a rape kit exam. In the article, it was also said that his roommate saw him having sex with a woman that same night, and it was later identified to be the victim of the previously mentioned assault. As of March 11, 2019 Roper is still in custody awaiting a bond hearing.
Source: 5280 Fire
This case of sexual assault connected to CU is unfortunately not the first one we’ve seen as a campus. According to an article published in the Daily Camera, a freshman at CU Boulder accused Shaan Sharma, a CU alumni, of sexually assaulting her after she had attended a frat party on The Hill on November 11, 2017. On the affidavit, other people at this party said she was heavily intoxicated. Sharma and his other fraternity brother called the woman an Uber back to her dorm room because they felt she was too drunk to be at the party. According to the woman’s statement portrayed in the article, she was “in and out of consciousness but remembers Sharma sexually assaulting her.” Sharma is set to go to trial on March 19th of this year, which he is pleading not guilty.
Source: Daily Camera
I’m sure some of you reading this remember the allegations put up against the Sigma Pi fraternity for drugging multiple women at a party last semester. According to police reports, five women claimed to be drugged at Sigma Pi parties off-campus in October and the fraternity was shut down after an assault was said to have happened at the frat house, which occurred the same night the first two victims were hospitalized for being drugged. According to a report by the CU Independent, the investigation into Sigma Pi regarding these drugging incidents have ceased due to mishandled blood samples.
Source: CU Independent
It is very apparent that CU has a problem with sexual assault by its students both on and off-campus, and this most recent allegation involving Zachary Roper should be handled with great care and investigative strength. Something needs to happen in order for the rape culture on this campus to stop. In a way, it is good that these stories are being publicized because maybe that’s the only way people will start to understand how serious of a problem this is, and how close to home it can actually get.