What do DeMattias Hall, Griesedieck Hall, Grand Forest Apartments and the Village Apartments have in common, other than housing students of Saint Louis University?
All have been broken into-and the apartments, burglarized-during the 2006-07 academic year.
According to the Department of Public Safety’s online crime log, seven burglaries and one robbery have transpired on campus since Jan. 17, 2007. Six of those burglaries occurred in the Village during spring break. In at least some cases, the perpetrator entered through an unlocked front door and stole valuables while victims slept soundly in their beds.
Add this spree to trespassing reported in DeMatt and Gries this January, burglaries in Grand Forest last semester, and the future of our campus safety looks shaky.
We could blame DPS, citing negligence. However, DPS officers regularly patrol campus and they are not omnipresent. We could blame administrators, who are ultimately responsible for the safety of our University. Yet administrators were assumedly absent from the crime scenes, and any action they take now in the form of policy, like new, professional security guards in many residence halls, will be retroactive. We could blame the burglars, be they outsiders or members of the SLU community-though it will do little good until they are identified.
Who, then, is left to blame?
It is senseless to attempt to assign blame to past events. Instead, we should accept responsibility for our future wellbeing.
If we want to keep our persons and possessions secure, we must assist DPS in promoting that on-campus security. At least in an elementary sense, we must take campus safety into our own hands.
What can we do? We can lock our doors at night and each time we leave, for example, as Director of Public Safety Jack Titone constantly suggests. If you consider DPS locking your door for you to be a violation of privacy, consider how students whose apartments were burglarized feel about their privacy.
We can keep valuables out of sight, bolted in our bedrooms or locked in a small safe.
We can check the peepholes on our front doors before opening them to unknown visitors.
We can report suspicious persons and vehicles to Resident Assistants, Deputy Assistants or desk workers, or by alerting DPS.
Whether or not you trust the methodology and accuracy of Morgan Quinto Press’ September 2006 study, which declared St. Louis the most dangerous U.S. city, you can’t ignore the facts: Crime does exist in St. Louis. City officials recorded 7,059 burglaries in one year, according to recent crime statistics. We are an open campus in Midtown St. Louis. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that burglaries might occur here.
The presence of DPS instills a feeling of safety on campus. As reassuring as that feeling may be, it does not substitute for actual safety. The simple story: Lock your doors. Use common sense and good judgment. Walk with a buddy. Keep an eye on your friends.
As a Jesuit university community, we have an obligation to be men and women for others by protecting both ourselves and our neighbors.
