Last week the Department of Public Safety published its annual
campus crime report, which covers incidents through December
2002.
It states that the Saint Louis University student body did not
receive citations as often for drug and alcohol offenses as the
previous year, yet burglary and robbery continue to remain a
problem and motor vehicle theft has skyrocketed.
In 2001, SLU recorded almost 500 drug and alcohol violations,
with four arrests made on campus, compared to only 125 violations
in 2000.
It is clear, as DPS Officer Keaton Strong states, that 2001 was
the year of “tough implementation of new programs, and the only way
to do this was to crack down on many (students).”
It is also clear from the numbers, however, that SLU students
are starting to get their act together. According to the report,
fewer than 400 drug and alcohol referrals and arrests were made
last year, down by almost a hundred from the previous year.
Officer Strong said that the University’s implementation of
educational programs such as SHAPE and the University Alcohol Task
Force have taught students the responsibilities associated with
drinking.
These programs are implemented not merely to punish students,
but to instruct them about the dangers of drinking irresponsibly
and abusing drugs.
Additionally, Strong compliments the First Year Experience at
SLU for reducing many of the citations.
FYE requires all freshmen to live together on single-sex floors,
and has also set aside the entire Griesedieck Complex exclusively
for freshman students.
Setting an entire residence hall aside for freshmen has limited
the amount of legal-age persons around to purchase alcohol for
minors. Strong believes these policies have been instrumental in
curbing drinking on campus.
While drinking and drug violations are down, it is clear from
DPS’s statistics that some serious problems still remain in and
around the SLU neighborhood.
Burglary reports have remained more or less the same for the
past three years. In 2002, SLU students reported 13 burglaries to
DPS, compared to 12 in 2001 and 14 in 2000.
“Most of the burglaries that actually took place were in dorm
rooms which had been left with their doors or windows opened,”
Strong said.
By doing so, SLU students are leaving no deterrent for a
potential thief to deal with. Yet Strong also said that DPS and the
University have been doing their parts to combat this problem.
Freshmen at SLU 101 have been advised on the dangers of leaving
their rooms unattended and their doors wide open. DPS additionally
has put up flyers around campus and signs warning students against
this practice.
Overall, with cooperation from students, Strong hopes these
numbers will go down in the future.
For the third consecutive year, the number has doubled from 5 in
2000 to 10 in 2001, and to 23 last year in 2002. Yet this problem
is not only a SLU concern. Strong said that motor vehicle theft has
increased 84 percent city-wide, and that most thefts do not occur
on SLU property, but on the streets surrounding the SLU campus.
Essentially, students have been advised not to leave their car
parked on the street, and to park in the garages. These garages
have been built with security monitoring equipment, as well as
limited access entrances, which give students extra protection for
their vehicle.
SLU DPS has also been meeting monthly with the St. Louis Police
Department to see what can be done about the situation.
Strong maintains that SLU is, in fact, a safe campus.
The University Chronicle, an outside agency which rates
university safety based on reports, has rated SLU the safest campus
in the Midwest the past three years. In efforts to increase safety
on campus, DPS has collaborated with the Student Government
Association to activate the DPS Advisory Committee to discuss
safety issues on campus.
The committee will try to get information on what student needs
are and address the issues step by step.
