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Show First Things First Sell Your Stuff. 2+/7 CHEAP/ WtODTNCT #?TNCS. CAPS. C«M¥UT£#?S. Cap & Gown make up day April 23, 9am-5pm . TSC Ballroom Everything for your graduation in one place Bachelor Pack $39.99* (cap,gown, & tassel) Master Pack $52.99* (cap, gown,tassel, & hood) PHD/Doctorate Pack $62.99* (cap, gown,tassel, & hood) If you are unable to attend the make up day Call 1.800.662.3950 by 12:00 pm on April 23 •prices subject to change after April 23, 2008 UtahState UNIVERSITY BOOKSTORE StatesmanCampus News Page 4 Friday, April 18, 2008 Housing: Campus living safe for students 1J continued from page 1 door to the apartment open and goes to visit another room for a minute. But that minute turns into many minutes and a potential thief has time to perform a graband-go theft, often stealing such high ticket items like laptops, televisions or wallets, he said. One thing that adds to this problem is apartment residents establishing rules to always leave the door unlocked, which only invites theft, Sessions said. And student residences aren't always the humble abodes that may be thought of. According to a recent Readers Digest report on campus security, an average dorm room contains anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 of goods, making student residences easy targets for a thief. "There's a comfort factor within their complex, that they feel they can leave their apartment door open and go across the hall or down a couple rooms and visit with friends," Sessions said. "The problem is it's open, there's no one else in there, so another student or visitor or friend can walk by, see an open door, no ones around, so they take an Xbox, a laptop, a wallet, or anything of that nature." Besides locking doors, students can also protect their personal property by taking an inventory of valuables, including computers, digital cameras, game consoles, DVDs, CDs and clothing, Sessions said. The inventory should include pictures of the items, detailed descriptions, serial numbers and model numbers, he said, which will help the police in their search to recover goods in the event they are stolen. Also, students can take the time to lock up computers with cable locks commonly found in computer and retail stores. Sessions said. While some of these locks may not be extremely strong, Sessions said the very appearance of security is often enough to deter a thief. "A student may not want to take the time to do such a thing, but clearly anything that shows a sign of security or slowing a thief down, he will not take that time," Sessions said. "He's going to see an open door, he knows that he's got maybe 20-30 seconds. He's going to take what's not secured, anything he can grab and carry. So if he's got a cable lock on his laptop or PC desktop, he's not going to take the time to yank and fight with it. He's going to just grab the Xbox 360. He'll take whatevers convenient." Whitney Milligan, director of residence life for USU Housing, said the housing staff takes security seriously and educate resident assistants and students on proper use of room keys and locking of doors. Also, in September, she said there was a safety week with an activity called, "If I was a thief," where a staff member would enter open rooms with a checklist of items and mark on that sheet which items they found in the apartment. Then they would leave the list in the room with a note saying, "If I was a thief, I would have stolen all this stuff." Laundry theft is also common, Sessions said, which can be avoided by "something some people think is kindergartenish": writing your name on the tag. But theft isn't the only problem in oncampus housing, Sessions said, citing drug and alcohol offenses, vandalism and disorderly conduct. One area of campus housing with higher than normal crime rates is Richards Hall, a trend that has been fairly common for many years, Sessions said. While there could be a variety of reasons for this, Sessions said he believes the layout and location of Richards Hall lends itself to higher crime. The west wing of Richards Hall has multiple entrances and exits, making it easy for students engaging in illicit activities to easily escape, even if police officers are at the front door, Sessions said. While this is only a theory, the east wing of Richards Hall seems to give support to this idea. The east end of Richards Hall has been remodeled and only has one way in and one way out, making it more difficult for people to leave if they were doing illegal activities, he said, and it appears because of this, the crime rate is lower in the east end of Richards Hall. But breaking the trend of Richards Hall being a hot bed for crime, the new Living and Learning Center has had more problems this year with drug and alcohol offenses, Sessions said. One of the more peaceful, quiet areas of campus has been the MASA housing, which primarily houses married students and graduate students, Sessions said. While the crime rate is low in this area, the police are occasionally called for domestic issues, he said. But these calls have gone down over the years, with the USU Police receiving "maybe a half dozen in an entire calendar year," Sessions said. "Very rarely do we have domestics, and when we do, more often than not, it's verbal," he said. "It's just become very loud and they've started shouting and the people in the next apartment below, above or beside, have called in to have us come and talk to them because they're afraid of what's hap- pening. Domestic violence, we know that it does happen. For the most part it is relatively minor. We haven't had severe injuries, which is good. Occasionally we do get some punching or slapping, which is unfortunate, but we deal with those on a case by case situation. We count on next door neighbors to call us because we don't have micTOphones in apartments. There's no way for us to know." Perhaps one of the more common safety issues with on-campus housing deals with fire alarms, Sessions said. Students frequently trip the fire alarm when cooking by putting food on the stove and leaving the room and forgetting about it, something that can be avoided by keeping a close watch and opening windows while cooking food, he said. Milligan said evacuation drills associated with fires are conducted frequently and residents and RAs are trained to execute these in a timely, safe manner. "We do take safety pretty seriously," Milligan said. "We know our RAs and peer mentors are people our residents will turn to in an emergency situation." While campus housing has enjoyed a safe environment in the past, USU Housing Director Steve Jenson said he and his staff continue to work on creating and implementing policies that will keep students safe, including a current plan in development to train staff and students to be aware of troubled individuals and methods to deal with these people. "We try to anticipate what kind of things to prepare students, not only while they live here, but lifelong skills " Jenson said. "That's part of the education processes that takes place from living on campus." But while USU Housing continues to work on improving housing security, including doing regular maintenance checks and nightly rounds to ensure outside doors axe locked, Milligan said students can take an active role in protecting themselves and their neighbors. "The things my staff tries to ingrain in our residents is to be aware of their surroundings," she said. "If they see someone out of place, report it. Keep their doors closed. Just be aware of theft issues. If you are going to keep your door open, be in a position to see where people are coming and going. If you feel unsafe for whatever reason, report it. Take some kind of action. It might turn out to be nothing but its better to err on the side of safety." -seth.h @aggiemaii usu.edu Aggie Game Day Special! INCWDES: 2281 N. North Logan 7S2-3252 Full D.A.B.C License 0 |