more info on rock from TI

Jun 13, 2013, 11:55 AM

CLEMSON -- Just a quick update on the info we've gathered from the recent vandalism of Howard's Rock. This is an open investigation, so everyone is being pretty tight-lipped about details. But here are some notables following a few phone calls we made this morning:

-- Amazing it took this long for it to get out. It happened 10 or 11 days ago, and there's been plenty of activity around The Rock with Dabo Swinney and campers taking pictures beside it. Apparently few people noticed.

-- We're told there was quite a bit of effort expended to keep this quiet. The hope was that they'd catch the vandal and then make an announcement at that time. But once word started to spread yesterday, Clemson released a prepared statement.

-- I spoke with Cathy Sams, chief public affairs officer for the university. She told me steps have been taken to increase the security around The Rock to ensure this does not happen again. She didn't want to divulge details and risk interfering with the investigation.

-- Sams told me this investigation is being handled by Clemson's university police department, and if they need outside expertise they will not hesitate to seek it. We were told by another source that the solicitor's office called Clemson this morning to offer its assistance in the area of subpoenas and such.

-- A lot of you are wondering why the university didn't divulge this sooner. Sams explained:

"Our thinking is it's an active investigation. Typically what we do in terms of issuing a statement regarding a campus crime is determine whether there is an ongoing threat to campus. We didn't believe that to be the case here. That's always the first thing.

"We will also make an announcement if police ask us to -- if they have some information and they're looking for a particular description of a car or whatever. In this case, they preferred to keep the investigation low key. We typically try to accommodate their wishes. When word got out, we felt we needed to confirm it. We weren't trying to keep people from finding out."

-- As some of you know, The Rock was vandalized in 1992 the night before Clemson played host to South Carolina. Safeguards were put in place to assure it didn't happen again and since then The Rock has been protected by a clear casing. Clearly, the casing wasn't protective enough in this instance.

-- Another safeguard that was not sufficient was the cameras that are positioned all across the stadium. We were told two cameras were not functioning, and others were pointed in other directions. Thus there does not appear to be any video available from the time that the vandalism took place.

-- There's quite a bit of construction taking place on Williamson Road behind The Rock, and thus there's been a lot of activity in that area. There's also work being done to the president's box on the south side of the stadium. We'd imagine investigators are looking closely at all the people who have had access to the stadium and the areas close to it.

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more info on rock from TI

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