Three women's bodies found in the sea at Brighton

[BlackTogetherAgain]

This is absolutely heartbreaking.

Why didn't anyone report three women were missing?

If it's a Channel crossing, from what I understand, it's rare that women go on the boats from France, and when they do they are pushed to the back / bottom, where the risk of being crushed is high.

If it's not a crossing, what on earth has happened?

Words can't express how evil this is.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cwyg508gg28t

At this point there is no confirmation they were students. Universities can’t ethically start mass-alerting or checking students without confirmed information from police and next-of-kin procedures.

That would start a mass panic

I tutor can't contact a student and ask how they're doing?

Tutors can contact an individual student if they already have a specific welfare concern, that is very different from a university trying to do a mass “roll call” after a news event.

Universities have thousands of adult students who commute, work shifts, miss lectures, travel home, or simply don’t reply to emails for days at a time, so there is no realistic way to instantly account for everyone. Sending messages asking students to confirm they are “safe” would also create mass panic, spread rumours, and completely overwhelm welfare services, especially before police have officially identified anyone or confirmed links to the universities. Can you imagine the panic/rumours if they did this? student families would start jamming up police telephone lines demanding answers and panicking. It would hinder not help.

Universities rely on police led identification processes, formal missing person reports, and targeted welfare checks where there is a genuine reason for concern, rather than attempting a citywide headcount of all students.

Not trivially they can't. Especially iPhones. It is an extremely time-consuming process that requires co-ordinating with both the telco and the phone manufacturer - and it is made much harder if the owner of the phone is unknown. Apple in particular are notorious for refusing police requests to access phone data.

3 people found dead isnt trivial though so yes, they would have the powers and ability to forensically examine phones if they had enough justification to believe they were owned by the three women who drowned. Especially if it was to identify them and to inform next of kin

One last time because you seem to be really struggling with this concept:

• not everyone has a tutor, and lecturers can have hundreds of students on their courses
• term is finished in a lot of places, the students are scattered. Would you expect pupils to want to take calls from school in the holidays….?
• there are well over 50,000 students studying in Brighton between the various unis, FE and HE schools, and they WON’T ALL HAVE A TUTOR
• Brighton is a party town - students come here from all over for nights out. Chichester uni, the Surrey ones, the London ones….. we have no idea these girls even went to uni in Brighton.
• Students also live in Brighton, and have come home from unis all over the country and indeed the world. It is very normal for them to want to be out and about with friends so families may not have noticed their absence.
• the SE has a huge proportion of international students - do you really think it’s run as a main news item in every country?

What you are asking for is completely ridiculous and impractical. It would take hundreds of man hours, and resources, and generate more false information than anything useful at all.

Plus around half of young people aren't students at all

So lots of young women in Brighton are locals, visitors and tourists with no links to any university or college

The 'students' information came from the daily mail article not the police

I have a family member studying at Brighton and their course finished a week ago. The idea that the university can immediately do a roll call is nonsense.

Nor can the police immediately access phone records. We want them to follow the correct procedure and that takes time.

I have no idea why MNer are in such a rush that they demand the information straight away.

Let the police do their job.

I’m studying at sussex and there are easily over 150 students on my course. Many of the students are from overseas. We are in the assessment period so apart from exams and submission dates we have no contact with the uni at present.

Exactly - and no thought given to the families of these young women who may be travelling to identify their children and/or might not be ready to have their names released yet

the information has been weirdly conflicting.
women aged 20-30
Students at a nightclub

Women aged 20-30 might be students and go to nightclubs. Undergraduates might be 21 or 22. And it's only an estimate in any case - one or more of them might be 19 - or 32.

Anyway, I expect the police are following lines of enquiry which they will not be sharing with the public unless or until there are definite identifications. There will be inquests, and that is the proper place to go into all the circumstances.

I think the problem is certain papers seem to releasing "information" that isnt correct, too (eg they were at a specific nightclub)

They should be legally prevented from doing this, its so irresponsible

I don’t think uni is anywhere near the same as a secondary school

Irrespective of where people are from there's a defined process to go through when bodies are found.

It's not just a question of going through pockets/bags and relying on (say) student ID plus bank cards.

The police probably have a good idea of names etc but then they'll need to contact presumed relatives and break news etc - specially trained officers with family as the news says.

Then family or others need to formally identify which is likely to be done in person.

Only after that can names be given to the media.

Surely a foreign student would need a very good standard of English to be studying in the first place?

I just assumed they were cold water swimmers who got into trouble.

By trivially I meant 'take them back to the station and plug them into a magic device' as seen on TV. Unfortunately it is a much more laborious and time-consuming task than that.

A lot of overseas students are in Brighton to learn English. They aren't all uni students

Er, yes I am fully aware of that. I don’t think there are “magic devices” you can plug phones into. There are however, legal protocols police can follow to forensically examine the contents of a phone if they have legal justification to do so. Three dead bodies would be such justification. Thats IF phones were even there and we don’t know they were.

I thought the same very initially but a. 5.30am would be very early in the morning even for cold water swimmers and b. They would surely be quite easy to identify as at least one, if not all, would have local friends/ family/ work/ community.

There are also a lot of Language schools in Brighton and like most cities there are trafficked women, many in brothels operating out of residential flats.

The express website has an update , a police spokesperson has said that they believe they've identified the women.

They have been identified but no names being released until they have been formally identified. How sad.
Three women pulled from sea in Brighton beach identified by police | Metro News

Oh my word, latest news is the three were all related, cousins apparently. What an awful tragedy for some poor family 😥

Yes, you can't reach everyone, but those education programmes have probably saved lives. You can't tell, of course, but that doesn't mean they haven't.