Housing Pros

Safety & Security on College Campuses: A Brief Overview for Residence Life Professionals

By Jason Borges, Residence Coordinator, Florida State University

Not long ago, colleges and universities were looked upon as safe havens, free from the criminal acts that occurred beyond the ivy and green meadows of academia. Sadly, this perception of campus life was untrue, but understandable considering the lack of published data on campus crime. The 1990s dispelled many myths about safety on college campuses with the passing of the Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act. Established in 1990, the act now requires institutions of higher learning to report criminal offenses and establish prevention methods (Kaplin & Lee, 1997, p. 264)

It is also important to note the evolution of this act. In 1992, the act was amended to require colleges and universities to include awareness and prevention programs for sexual assault. In 1998, further amendments required additional reporting obligations, extensive campus security-related provisions, and the requirement to keep a daily crime log. With these amendments, the act was also renamed the Jeanne Cleary Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, or simply the Cleary Act (Fisher, Cullen, & Turner, 2000).

Since this legislation, colleges are now required to report the number of liquor violations, weapons possessions, sexual assaults, and other offenses in addition to distributing this information to all students, prospective students, parents, and the secretary of education (Kaplin & Lee, 1997, p. 264). Therefore, it is important that administrators, both internal and external to student housing, now take a more proactive approach in combating the issue of campus crime to maintain a positive image and ease concerns.

Sadly, the image these statistics create can often times be misleading. Because of the massive undertaking the U.S. Department of Education must endure to compile data on all campuses nationwide, the average number of crimes reported in their study uses data up to three years behind that of institutional reports, which are released annually. One should account in a slight increase in crime from year to year to coincide with growth of student populations. Second, increased success in victim advocacy programs can also be described as a "double-edged sword." For example, schools who report a higher number of sex offenses at an institution may not actual have more incidents than a school with a lower number, but are simply in a position where more students feel comfortable in seeking support and reporting offenses to university officials.

Student Attitudes Towards Campus Safety

Responding to a highly publicized sexual assault, Susan Vance, a Crime Prevention Specialist at Colorado State University, showed students how they can secure windows using a pin technique used in the campus residence halls. However, she notes that student psychology often depreciates the value of such measures when students fail to shut their windows thinking they could never be victims (Nirch, 2001).

This highlights the most challenging obstacle in administrators' response to campus safety. Colleges and universities can place the world's most sophisticated locks on their residence hall doors, but if students choose not to use them, the locks will fail in their ability to reduce risk. Overall, there are also many costless ways that students can protect themselves including calling a friend to walk with after dark, using an escort service, avoiding poorly lit paths, locking doors and windows, securing open doors, notifying security of suspicious persons, and arranging for first-time dates to occur in familiar surroundings. However, many students will not participate in these actions for a number of reasons (Lenski, Meyers, & Hunter, 1996).

Research has outlined a number of thought processes today's college student possesses that makes promoting safety and security on college campuses difficult. The dominant fact being college students' apathy towards safety procedures, usually due to an unreasonable belief that they are safer than they actually are. Lenski et al. outlined a Safety Belief Model consisting of eight scales, each of which focuses on a particular set of beliefs connected to behavioral intent. They are as follows:

Motivation to comply - "How does this contribute to my wellness?"
Perceived benefits - "How does this reduce my threat of victimization?"
Perceived barriers - "Is this method of safety convenient?"
Perceived susceptibility - "Am I even vulnerable to begin with?"
Perceived severity - "How bad are the consequences to begin with?"
Perceived threat - Combination of the latter two scales
Safety beliefs - Based on personal history, environment, view of reality
Safety behavior intention - Outcome of all scales combined (Lenski et al., 1996)

This model serves as an excellent basis for residence life professionals' understanding of the mindset of today's college student. It sends a message that to promote safety and security on college campuses, students must first be educated on the facts of how safe they truly are in their environments, and then convenient safety mechanisms that students will be open to utilizing must be installed.

Recommendations for Residence Life Professionals

Residence life and housing professionals should use the aforementioned Safety Belief Model as a guide for implementing safety and security measures in their hall relating to both programming and facilities. While no list can be all inclusive, in his book, Creating a Safe Campus, Dr. David Nichols gives the following suggestions for programming, which has been found to be one of the more useful tools in promoting safe living in residence halls:

Hold regular floor meetings in residence halls to discuss security issues and develop plans and programs.
Distribute crime safety brochures aimed at residence students' safety.
Create special crime prevention decals with emergency phone numbers.
Offer special safety seminars and workshops on such topics such as assault, sexual assault awareness, vehicle safety, and self-defense (1997).

In addition, Nichols also gives the following suggestions for residence hall facilities:

Lock all exterior doors either 24 hours a day, or during designated times such as nighttime. The removal of outer door handles to some locked doors might also reduce ease of access.
Install peepholes in all individual room doors.
Place delayed alarms on all exterior doors, so a central monitoring station will be signaled if a door is left propped.
Install a free telephone line or buzzer outside of each residence hall so visitors can contact guests to be escorted into the building.

Areas directly adjacent to residence halls are a concern as well. While landscaping can contribute greatly to the aesthetics of a residence hall environment, if not properly controlled and thoughtfully designed, it can provide hiding places for persons with criminal intent and serve as a danger to students. At least one inspection should be conducted annually to identify areas where landscaping and plant growth compromise safety (Campus Crime Prevention Programs, 1996, p. 306). For the same reasons, a focus must be placed on exterior lighting too. The International Association for Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) recommend that a verifiable system of reporting lighting functions should be developed along with a formalized weekly inspection. In addition, exterior lighting should be controlled by automatic devices where switches are inaccessible to the public (Campus Crime Prevention Programs, 1996).

Advances in technology can also be quite useful. Using card access in lieu of traditional locks offers several advantages. On advantage to this system is unlike keys, access with cards can be granted or removed at any time. Therefore, if a student loses their card, it can be deactivated immediately whereas a lost key could still be found by those with criminal intent and abused. Especially in residence halls with over one hundred residents and employees, this system is extremely beneficial as the alternative of replacing the building front entrance lock for every lost key is usually a logistical challenge, if even possible (Townsend, 1990). Card access technology can also give administrators an option to allow certain doors to only open during designated hours, and can even give administrators a record of when students enter the building, which could be used to address vandalism or other mischievous acts (Daneman, 1998). Of course, this new technology can be quite costly, and not an option for some institutions.

Safety & Security vs. Liability

Of course, while many residence life professionals would be willing to implement every safety system available if resources would allow it, cost or other factors make some devices and programming unrealistic. The question then raised under the Cleary Act is "When are institutions legally obligated to provide certain security measures?"

College professionals should know that legal liability in campus safety is often based on whether or not the crime was foreseeable (McEvoy, 1992, p. 139). Although administrators cannot completely control the crime rate on their campuses, if they do not protect against it, they could still face penalties. McEvoy states that colleges and universities must take the following precautions to protect themselves from legal responsibility:

Ensure safety measures are taken against any foreseeable crimes.
Ensure safety measures are reasonable (for example, are there enough security guards in an area with a specific number of students?)
Ensure the institution has made its best attempts to warn students of possible dangers (1992).

Conclusion

Hopefully, this article is helpful as a guide to access safety concerns present at your institution and provide assistance for implementing improvements. Developing a safe campus is a monumental task that often presents many unexpected challenges for campus safety officials. Administrators should concentrate on being proactive for improvement rather than reactive in assigning blame for insufficient safety practices. The author closes by asking his readers to remember the following quote by writer Ralph Marston while pursuing success in this area: "Even in our world of instant fortunes, instant communication, and instant gratification, it is still true that anything of true and lasting value takes time and effort. Aim for perfection, and follow the less-than perfect road that will get you there.

References

Campus Crime Prevention Programs. (1996, May). The Complete Campus Crime Prevention Manual. Goshen, Kentucky: Author.
Daneman, K. (1998, February). Securing a lock on safety. American School & University, 70, 49-53.
Fisher, B. S., Cullen, F. T., & Turner, M. G. (2000, December). The sexual victimization of college women. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs.
Kaplin, W. A., & Lee, B. A. (1997). A legal guide for student affairs professionals: Adapted from the law of higher education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Lenski, T. J., Meyers, H. W., & Hunter, D. E. (1996). Understanding students' intentions to use safety precautions. NASPA Journal, 33, 82-93.
McEvoy, S. A. (1992). Campus insecurity: Duty, foreseeability, and third party liability. Journal of Law & Education, 21, 137-154.
Nichols, D. (1997). Creating a safe campus: A guide for college and university administrators. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas Publisher LTD.
Nirch, C. (2001, September 4). Catching assaulter requires assistance. The Collegian, pp. 1, 3.
Townsend, C. (1990, September). Card access improves security. American School & University, 63(1), 16b-16d.

About the Author:

Jason Borges is a recent graduate of Colorado State University's Student Affairs in Higher Education master's degree program, and is now serving as a Residence Coordinator at Florida State University. He wishes special thanks to Drs. David McKelfresh, James Dolak, Paul Shang, and Karen Wedge, who served on the defense committee from which this article was adapted.