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Three Rapes in One Week At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

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Photo by Adrian Miles © via Flickr

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Students and faculty are growing increasingly concerned after the third rape was reported in one week at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. The victim told police that she was assaulted inside her dorm room on Sunday, according to KCBS. She reported that she was intoxicated and unconscious during the attack, as were the other two victims.

The first incident took place on May 7 at a Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity party. In a disturbing twist, it appears as though other students either saw or knew as Cal Poly student Joseph Trupiano raped the college-aged woman who had passed out, and did nothing to stop it or report it.

Trupiano, 23, later turned himself in.

Following that incident, a woman was raped at on-campus dorm Poly Canyon Village on May 12, the same location of Sunday's attack.

No one has been arrested in connection to either incident at Poly Canyon Village dormitory, and campus police are not saying whether any of the women were drugged.

Stephan Lamb, the staff coordinator of Greek affairs at Cal Poly, told the San Luis Obispo Tribune that the university is reviewing evidence and will decide whether to cut ties with Sigma Phi Epsilon. In the meantime, local San Luis Obispo station KCOY reports that school president Jeffrey Armstrong has announced that he's forming a task force to ensure that the school doesn't tolerate sexual assault.

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