Despite an effort by the new Office for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response last Monday to alert students to a rash of Rohypnol poisonings, the e-mail warning only trickled out to students through a variety of House lists and did not reach one House at all.

Office director Susan B. Marine sent the e-mail, which said two students were confirmed to have been treated for consuming the “date-rape drug” at off-campus parties, to Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment (SASH) tutors in every House, asking them to forward the warning to students.

Residents in at least half the Houses received the warning the day Marine sent it out.

But SASH tutors in Dunster, Lowell and Quincy Houses did not forward Marine’s e-mail to House lists until days and even over one week later—and Currier House residents never received it.

Marine said she asked the SASH tutors to forward the message to House residents, but that they were under no obligation to send out the e-mail. She said she does not consider it the main responsibility of the Office or of the SASH tutors to send out campus safety alerts.

“Their main duty is to be trained to support students who need assistance after being sexually assaulted,” Marine said. “They do not have any particular responsibility to be any particular mouthpiece for any particular message.”

She stressed that the Office—which was established to coordinate sexual assault prevention education and services on campus—is not in charge of coordinating the SASH tutors and that the House tutors’ extra title is indicative of a “volunteer position,” not a “job.”

“I’m not their boss,” she said. “There’s no way I can say to people you have to do something. I have to hope that people will do what I ask.”

Marine said she also sent the warning e-mail to all senior tutors, whom she said are “just as able as SASH advisors to put out information about this.”

Dunster House SASH tutor Ramona Uritescu-Lombard sent the e-mail warning to Dunster residents just last night, after telling The Crimson on Monday that she had not sent it and declining to comment further.

Both Lowell and Quincy House residents received the warning as part of House digests. Lowell disseminated it through the Lowell House News Letter this Monday and Quincy’s newsletter Q-Tips published it on Friday.

Lowell SASH tutor Debra A. Sorenson wrote in an e-mail that she submitted the warning last week to run in Lowell’s newsletter, which is published on Mondays, but must have “missed the previous submission deadline by a day or two.”

A student in Winthrop House forwarded the e-mail to Throptalk shortly after Marine sent it.

The College established the Office, headed by Marine, last spring after a year and a half of agitation by the Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Violence (CASV) for greater centralization of resources for sexual assault victims and a more comprehensive sexual assault prevention education program.

The primary responsibility of SASH tutors is to counsel and support victims of sexual assault and harassment, as well as to help organize Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) classes.