Crime Wave on Campus

Officials at the University of California at Santa Cruz last week decided to award Alice Liu and Rosalind Thorpe their degrees posthumously at graduation ceremonies in June. Both students were murdered and their bodies dismembered last month, apparently after being picked up while hitchhiking between the campus and their apartments.

That announcement was a grisly, if extreme reminder that on many campuses the biggest problem today is crime--not student demonstrations or vandalism, but assaults, armed robberies and rapes. Such incidents have increased on campuses across the country by 50% in two years, according to John W. Powell, executive secretary of the International Association of College and University Security Directors. Even the 10 ft. brick walls of Harvard Yard have been insufficient to prevent a wave of thefts and assaults. Last fall, for example, a gang of seven Cambridge youths kicked and beat Freshman Philippe Bennett in the yard, then assaulted two more students--all within 100 yds. of the university police station. During one recent two-week period, Harvard police recorded 42 burglaries of student rooms.

Other schools report similar crime waves. At Boston's Tufts, some 250 thefts of stereos, radios, wallets, typewriters, jewelry and clothes have been reported so far this year--already well over the 203 reported in the 1971-72 academic year. At Purdue University, thefts have jumped from 300 cases reported in 1965 to 922 last year, and at the University of Illinois at Champaign the value of stolen property has soared remarkably from less than $50,000 three years ago to more than $200,000 last year.

While rising student affluence may have made theft more lucrative, campus police blame the increase in incidents on the off-campus drug culture and more open dormitories on campus. Says Police Chief Robert Tonis of Harvard: "A great deal is due to desperate people"--teenagers who are paying for their habits. Moreover, the greater impersonality of campuses, caused by the expanded enrollment in the 1960s, makes it easier for intruders to masquerade as students. In addition, says Security Director Paul Doebel of the University of Illinois: "We encounter a great deal of naivete about security among students, as well as hostility at any mention of tighter controls." At Northern Illinois University, a security officer was recently scheduled to discuss the crime problem at a dorm--but no one bothered to come to hear him. Explains Harvard Vice President Stephen Hall: "Students could cut crime by 90% if they would lock their doors and be more suspicious."

Tighter security does seem to be the best solution. At U.C.L.A., the campus security force was beefed up from 36 to 48 men over the last year, and reported crime dropped by 30%. At Berkeley, crime plummeted after officials improved campus lighting, hired additional police and sent students a memorandum warning: "Don't hitchhike ... Female students are encouraged to carry a shrill whistle ... Don't go alone at night--traveling in twos is better, in a group best." Thus the best way to avoid becoming a campus crime victim is to adopt strategies that have become all too familiar to residents of large cities.

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