A 21-year-old University of Wisconsin student was sexually assaulted early Saturday morning on the 1000 block of Spring Street, according to a report filed with the Madison Police Department.

MPD officers are currently looking for two suspects who allegedly approached the woman as she was walking around 1:40 a.m. The suspects are described as two white men in their mid-20s who are both about 5'11" tall.

"This is absolutely disappointing that yet another horrific attack has occurred in the campus area," said Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4. "I'm really at the end of my rope in terms of being at wit's end — I really cannot stress enough how unusual it is to have so many seemingly violent attacks occurring in the same year."

Sgt. Jennifer Krueger Favour of the MPD said the area of Spring Street has not had an unusually high number of violent crimes.

"That whole area is heavily student-populated, so there's issues that happen all the time that are related to student-population issues," Krueger Favour said. "I don't know if I could say that this area is any more of a concern than other areas of campus."

According to Verveer, many non-students who are currently under supervision by the state's Department of Corrections live in the area where the assault occurred, and this will likely give city detectives a place to start looking for suspects.

"If there's any silver lining in all of this, according to a Madison Police official I spoke to today, the victim was not physically injured," Verveer said. "It goes without saying she's very emotionally scarred by this traumatic incident, but at least she's not hospitalized."

Verveer said this attack is similar in some ways to attacks that occurred last semester, where strangers attacked young women walking alone at night.

City Council President Austin King, whose district includes the area of Spring Street, said this incident reinforces the need for the city to invest more in downtown safety.

"I would love to see a neighborhood officer on Spring Street, just like we have on Langdon Street," King said. "But even if we tripled the amount of foot patrol, it's not necessarily going to be able to stop two predators from doing something that's awful."

The Downtown Safety Initiative, which was created in part by the MPD and Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, calls for an increase in the number of police officers on foot patrol at night. However, the increase isn't expected to happen until this spring.

"[This assault] makes one think that perhaps we can't be waiting to use those extra cops now," Verveer said.

Krueger Favour said there is no indication as of yet that this assault is related to other assaults that have occurred in the campus area. No arrests have been made as of press time.