Journalist Roundtable: funding for online marketplace sales and safety for off-campus college students

The Spark

Sydney Roach at WPSU in State College recently reported on legislation approved by the Pennsylvania Senate to provide funding to create safe exchange zones for child custody and online marketplace sales. She was drawn to report on this story because she does a lot of shopping on Facebook Marketplace.

“I just thought it would be something that would be of interest to a lot of people and especially whenever I discovered some of the story behind it. There was a woman killed in Jonestown a few years ago. And so, after that, Johnstown police put up a safe exchange zone to prevent more tragedies like that. So basically, what it is, is it's just like a parking spot or some sort of spot in public view. In this bill, they define that as either 100ft away from like a law enforcement agency or some sort of like public park or some sort of public place. So, it's in the public eye. And then there also has to be surveillance cameras. And there also has to be a sign saying that it's a safe exchange zone. So, it's a pretty easy thing for municipalities to do. And this bill would just it's grant funding to help more places incorporate that, like the one in Johnstown, “said Roach.

Stehpanie Sigafoos is with LeighValleynews.com. She just reported on a local family channeling grief to mission to change college and university culture around the safety of off campus housing after 20-year-old Carly Grozier passed away as a result of injuries suffered in a gas explosion at her off campus home in West Virginia.

“Carly had three roommates. They rented an off-campus home, as most juniors do. And when they go to college in four-year environment and unfortunately, it sounds like there were problems right off, you know, right off the bat in terms of dealing with the landlord. There were issues related to the plumbing. There were issues that were certainly brought to the landlord's attention that, you know, kind of sparked this entire thing because they're alleging that the landlord hired an unlicensed contractor to do work on the bathroom. And they're saying he opened a gas valve and then left that gas valve open. And it unfortunately caused a massive gas leak. It caused the home to fill with three times the amount of gas that would typically be servicing the home over a number of days. And so, the home, you know, there was an explosion that was always when Carly lit a candle and she lit a candle because they were told that, in fact, it was not gas leaking, but it was water. It was the sewer that they were smelling. And the contractor said, I'll be back to fix it. And, you know, obviously that never took place because the explosion occurred, “said Sigafoos.

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