 HOW SAFE ARE COLLEGE CAMPUSES?
By Jack Etzel
When any disaster occurs on a college campus, parents and students
often have similar thoughts: “That could have happened to us,” or
“This is happening everywhere.” Factually, these crimes are extremely
rare, but how safe are college campuses in reality? For this month’s
Perspective, we visited University of Pittsburgh Police Commander
Kathleen Schreiber. She has been with the university’s police
department for 32 years, and has served in her position as commander
for the past 10 years. Schreiber holds a bachelor’s degree in
Criminology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a master’s
degree in Law Studies from Pitt’s School of Law. North Hills Monthly
Magazine (NHMM): In general, what changes have you seen in your role
as a commander for the past 10 years? Commander Kathleen Schreiber:
For an example of what has changed on our own campus, as well as many
others, I can point to electronic locking with card swipe systems; new
camera systems which are also in public places; and advanced
communications systems among the students and between other police
agencies. Email existed 10 years ago, but today it’s used so much
more, in so many ways. In the case of an emergency, there is the
capability of immediately locking down most of the buildings on
campus, just to mention a few things that weren’t available just 10
years ago. NHMM: What is the most important thing that makes one
campus safer than another? Schreiber: It comes down to the
administration, one that asks questions about what we can do better to
make students and all others safer, especially if it’s a campus that
has its own integrated security department. NHMM: The most horrible
crimes make the news, but that’s partly because they’re the exception.
What are the most common problems at any campus on a day-to-day basis?
Schreiber: Minor harassments, criminal mischief. Every year, we get a
new clientele of students who have only lived with their own families.
They haven’t learned how to transition from home to a world where, for
example, you have to protect your own belongings. Many don’t yet
realize that they can’t walk away from their laptop in the library and
be certain that it will still be there when they return from the
restroom. NHMM: We can’t talk about campus security without bringing
up the Clery Act. A reader may know little or nothing about this piece
of legislation, but can you fill us in on how this law has changed
campus security across the country? (Note: The Clery Act is named
after 19-year-old Jeanne Clery, a Lehigh University freshman murdered
in 1986.)
Schreiber: The federal Clery Act requires all public and private
post-secondary institutions that receive federal funding, which would
be most of them, to maintain and publish a list of all services for
students, including information on counseling, medical services and
where students should go and what to do if they’re a victim of any
crime. A major part of the Clery Act requires the publication of crime
alerts and all crime statistical information. Clery also mandates a
daily log which details what incidents have happened on any given day,
so that students, staff and faculty can be aware of what’s going on at
their university. NHMM: And those statistics are available to anyone
at the school?
Schreiber: By law, that information must be available to every
prospective, as well as every current student, parent, staff member
and employee of the institution. Every school has to publish something
like this (holding up a copy of Pitt’s magazine called For Safety’s
Sake) which lists all of the available services and what has existed
in the way of crime on campus as well as in the surrounding areas. It
is information about where to go if there’s a problem, whether it be
health-related, crime-related or just about anything where assistance
is needed. NHMM: What prevents a college from fudging on the
statistics, not accurately publishing crimes that might otherwise
reflect negatively on a particular school? Schreiber: This federal
law has very heavy oversight by the Department of Education which
audits secondary institutions, and if and when they find any hedging,
especially crime statistics that are not accurate, that school will be
heavily fined. NHMM: What about being proactive before something bad
occurs? Schreiber: Consistently, at least every year, there should
be crime-prevention programs including sexual assault prevention, fire
drills and numerous student-based preventive measures. Lesser known,
however, is that from a police standpoint we look at emergency
preparedness, too. Campus police must do their own drills in rapid
deployment on a regular basis, practicing responses for any actual
emergency. More and more campuses now have, or are developing, a
Special Emergency Response Team (SERT), which is nationally certified.
NHMM: As a mother, if you had a child going away to school, how would
you assess the safety of another campus? Schreiber: I’ve done that.
I went online and made phone calls. I looked at the crime statistics
at several campuses. I looked at what the campus said and checked it
against the U.S. Department of Education statistics for that
university. I also contacted the local police departments surrounding
those universities and asked about their statistics and how well they
worked with a certain university and asked about safety at that
school. But statistics don’t tell the whole story. A parent should
call student associations and student groups to ask what they think,
including their thoughts about the safest places to live. Obviously,
academics are very important, but so is the environment and safety. If
you want your child to be safe, don’t be afraid to go online, make
phone calls, ask questions and take notes.
For further details and background on the Clery Act online, visit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clery_Act For individual campus
security data from the U.S. Department of Education online, visit
http://ope.ed.gov/security
|
