Students report feeling safe on campus

Sixty-two percent of University students say they feel "very safe" at the University, despite the fact that 24 percent said they have been victims of theft, according to a recent Daily Princetonian survey of 758 undergraduates.

One hundred eighty students said they were victims of theft, reporting total losses of $39,205 — more than enough to pay an entire year's comprehensive fee. Overall, the average loss per victim was $217.81, or $51.72 per student.

Crime Prevention Specialist Barry Weiser said he believes part of the reason so many students have suffered losses is that 70 percent of students do not always lock their doors.

"Students figure it's safe here, why not?" Weiser said.

Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan said feeling safe on campus may make students complacent about securing their property. "I think there is clearly an upside and downside to the perception that this is a safe community," she said. "The upside is that it is safe, and we want people to feel that they are in a secure community. We enjoy the feeling of security that some of our sister campuses in more urban areas don't enjoy."

"But the downside," she noted, "is that students become lackadaisical about their own safety."

Of those students that do lock their doors, 23 percent said they still do not feel their rooms are completely secure. Of the 58 burglaries reported on campus this year, 18 occurred in rooms that had locked doors, Weiser said. Most first-floor rooms in University dorms do not have screens on the windows, enabling persons to enter the rooms easily from the outside, he added.

Weiser said the University is taking steps to remedy this problem by installing "heavy-duty mesh screens" in each dormitory during its scheduled renovation.

More than half of the respondents — 57 percent — said they had been able to forcefully pull open an exterior dormitory door without first using their prox card to unlock the door. Weiser said the problem of faulty door locks could easily be fixed.

"We can tighten up those electronic strikers," he said, referring to the adjustable mechanism that prevents a dormitory door from opening without a proxx. He said "normal wear and tear" and changing weather conditions cause the mechanisms to become loose, making the doors easy to pull open.

Students said they were able to forcefully pull open doors in more than half of the University's dormitories, according to questionnaire responses.

Public Safety is aware that doors can be forced open, Weiser said, because an alarm goes off in Stanhope Hall every time a door is pulled open without using a prox.

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Weiser expressed surprise, however, over the number of faulty prox locks across campus, and said the University would investigate the matter. "This will be very interesting to our alarm and prox shop," he said.

While only 30 percent of students said they always lock their doors, 92 percent said they always lock their bicycles.

Weiser said bike theft is one of the main issues Public Safety addresses each year. "We've always known [bike theft has] been the biggest problem," he said. Weiser said the majority of stolen bicycles have not been secured. These thefts account for a large portion of the stolen items on campus each year, he said.

Sixty-two percent of students, however, indicated they believed Public Safety was doing "everything it can" to ensure the safety of University students and their property. Deignan noted, though, that residential colleges may be able to do more to encourage incoming freshmen to be aware of the possible dangers of theft and other criminal acts.

Vice President and Secretary Thomas Wright '62 said that to alleviate theft on campus and improve students' safety, both the University and the students need to take steps to increase awareness.

"The issues of security are partly a matter of the [favorable] community attitude toward security and partly a matter of institutional support for strong security systems —you need both," he said. "I think it's a fair question looking at [the] data whether we are doing adequately on both fronts."