Foundation, Wells report 25 incidents

A fire alarm going off may not be the ideal morning wake-up call, but for students living in The Village Building 5, this situation has already occurred 25 times since August, according to Public Safety.

The department keeps track of all calls ranging from incidents such as fire alarms to underage drinking.

Although all calls go through dispatch and require Public Safety’s assistance, not all are written as reports.

The most common calls Public Safety gets, in regards to the residence halls and The Village, are alarms.

“We get calls to all of (the buildings),” said Interim Chief Major Joe Grant. “Because of the fact that you have the kitchens at The Village, more of our calls out there are going to be alarm related. (However,) The Village has been fairly quiet this year, except for maybe the alarm calls.”

Chief Detective Robert Butler relates these common occurrences to the sensitive detectors that are located above the stoves in the apartments.

Not including the alarm-related calls, Foundation and Wells halls both sit at 25 calls a piece to Public Safety as of April 20. Wells Hall has had the same amount of calls despite having fewer residents than Foundation Hall.

“Wells, Foundation and Parkhurst had a lot of vandalism incidents going on all through the year so they probably had a few more calls over there,” Grant said.

Calls where disciplinary actions had to be taken by Public Safety occurred in both Wells and Foundation halls six times over the course of the year. Both also have four records of drug calls that occurred in the halls.

“Our calls for service are everywhere,” Grant said. “We get them to go to the parking lots to unlock cars, to jump off cars, we get a lot of times to go open up buildings and different things on main campus too.”

Village Building 6 has the highest rate of larceny and theft, and both Foundation Hall and Village Building 4 had one sexual offense call.

Sanford Hall also had an instance of terroristic threats.

“Most likely it was a boyfriend-girlfriend kind of thing,” Grant said. “The call could come in as a terroristic threat and it’s just a misunderstanding.”

For students interested in a drama-free hall, Napier Hall has the lowest record of incidents this semester with Village Building 2 following closely behind.

However, Grant and Butler stress these trends change each year.

“If you take the same stats next year it may be completely different,” Grant said.

According to Public Safety, since the cameras were installed on campus incidents in the residence halls and at The Village have decreased immensely.

“I think the residents know that if they are going to do something that’s going to be borderline, there’s a good possibility that we’re going to be able to track it back to them because of the cameras,” Butler said. “Since we installed cameras at all the entrances and exits, we haven’t had nearly the problems. They are deterrents.”

Regardless of whether it was burnt popcorn or a fight has broken out, Public Safety responds to all of these calls.

“The calls at the residence halls you want to take very seriously, because of the people that are out there,” Grant said. “Like these alarms, we answer those and respond to those 10-18, which is an emergency, meaning blue lights and sirens. You have to take the mindset that every time you answer a call, it’s probably the real thing, it’s what you’re expecting.”

Posted by Katelyn Hebert on Apr 28 2011. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.