Brian Walker

Staff Writer

Two crimes involving sexual violence happened two weeks apart, and not even a peep from the university. Is student sexual safety a priority or punishment?

As it’s now been reported by multiple news outlets, a 20-year-old Allentown man was arrested and accused of raping and sexually assaulting an 18-year-old college student at an East Stroudsburg University dorm room on Sept. 12, 2026. The man has been identified as Edmoh F. Sheriff, of the 700 block of North Main Street, and is being held in Monroe County Prison, with a hearing on Sept. 29.

In the meantime, an East Stroudsburg University police officer is being accused of sexually assaulting two children in two separate incidents. Joseph Patrick Gallagher Jr., 40, of East Stroudsburg is facing 22 charges, including felony rape in a case involving a girl under 12.

He also faces two counts of aggravated indecent assault of a child, one of which is tied to the second case in which Gallagher is accused of urinating on a boy under 6.

This begs the question: Why hasn’t the university released a statement addressing the sexual misconduct on campus, along with a detailed proposal and reassurance that measures are being made to ensure our safety?

For all intents and purposes, let’s say the school decided it was best to wait for the Sheriff’s hearing regarding the rape and sexual assault to take place on Sept. 29 before addressing the matter with a potentially victorious outcome. Is that a wise decision? And would the second incident warrant a rapid response, given that the sexual assailant is employed by the university?

It wasn’t a dilemma for the school to provide a statement for the public by stating, “The allegations involving the officer are unrelated to his employment with the university,” before they addressed its student body. Do they care about how that makes us feel about the incidents, let alone if we feel safe on campus?

They can’t say, “The university takes all allegations seriously and follows established policies and procedures when matters are brought to our attention involving university employees,” when the school itself had suspected improper behavior earlier in the year, launched an investigation and had video footage of the officer performing felonious acts on campus.

Subsequently, the university’s Human Resources Department thought a “Notice of Official Written Reprimand” would suffice as punishment for the officer’s transgression. It’s also been alleged that the employee hasn’t been terminated, but rather placed on leave.

Again, giving them [ESU] the benefit of the doubt, it can all be viewed as a tactic to ensure proper protocol is being followed if this employee is a member of a union. Or a machination to save face, in hopes this becomes known as student fodder instead of their attempt to shield systems of predatory conduct.

You would think the school would have learned from their past infraction. The 2008 termination of the then Vice President Isaac Sanders, who was terminated for sexual abuse of students and was written off as “exercised exceedingly poor judgment.”

Learning about this incident through the grapevine is a disturbance in itself. The irony and oxymoron of campus police, whose job is to serve and protect, having sexual proclivities for children, and having access to teenagers on a college campus, is a sort of negligence on the administration’s part.

The reality is, regardless, if the university took every preemptive measure there is to ensure the campus remains safe from sexual assaults of any nature, it’s simply impossible to predict a successful outcome between fraternity parties and other social events that take place on and off campus. The fact remains that sexual violence and assault cases are prone to happen on college campuses.

According to the National Campus Climate, 1 in 5 undergraduate women and 1 in 14 undergraduate men experience sexual violence or assault during their time in college. We’re not naïve to the fact that these crimes are going to happen and are happening everywhere. We would just like for ESU to not treat what transpired as trivial and student folklore.

The idea and understanding of consent is something many college students are still grasping when they arrive on these college campuses. And those who do comprehend what consensual and non-consensual sex is find their offering of consent convoluted when alcohol and drugs are part of the equation.

Be that as it may, a simple acknowledgment/statement of what occurred could have gone a long way and served as a redemptive action for the injury done to their students. However, ESU is content with treating the crime as innocuous.

Both sexual violent acts that occurred remind me of the G.K. Chesterton quote, “To abuse authority is to attack authority.” People in leadership and authority roles are to serve as a bulwark, not an abusive bully.