Early Sunday morning, a car driven by a non-Oswego State student was involved in a collision into school property outside Cayuga Hall. The incident was a scary situation; the car could have collided with the building itself and hurt both the driver and others.

Thankfully, no one was injured. Cayuga was not damaged. Everything, as far as Oswego State students should be concerned, is okay. However, the incident raised a lot of concern via spoken word and social media. And by concern, we mean, for the most part, rumors.

These rumors raise a couple of concerns in themselves: West Campus already has a negative stigma surrounding it, one that labels it as the “party” side of campus. Students raising alarming claims of drunk driving before anything has even been investigated does not help this reputation.

When a car nearly hits a residence hall, of course there will be suspicion of substances of some kind being involved. Whether or not those suspicions turn out to be factual, it does a disservice to our school, specifically West Campus, when rumors are started that paint it in a negative light.

Concerning the incident, the driver was charged with driving while intoxicated. However, it is a disrespect to ourselves as students who reside on this campus and care about its reputation to spread rumors of this nature before the facts are looked into or released. Suspicions are fine. They are natural. They happen and we can’t control that. But claiming something as fact before knowing it to be true is hardly a good way to get the full story straight.

West Campus has a long history of being the “lesser” area of campus. Lakeside and Central Campus may have their share of incidents, but West Campus has always been deemed a more rambunctious area. Rumors don’t help relieve this connotation, even if those rumors prove to be true. The driver was not a student of Oswego State, but students were quick to think that it was.

The moral of the story is to let facts be realized before starting rumors or racing to wild assumptions. Sometimes those rumors can be factual but in future instances they may not be, and as a community of students we need to refrain from passing judgment too quickly.

West Campus is not the dumpster that the rest of campus may think it is. Incidents of all kinds happen in all areas of our community. For the rest of us to respect the West, it starts with them.