Responding to recent attacks against women on campus, the University, the Department of Public Safety and the Eugene Police Department are poised to expand existing security programs and are considering new methods to make the area safe at night.
Proposals include assigning volunteer observers to comb campus after dark, constructing a comprehensive outdoor lighting infrastructure and increasing community education. Already, DPS and EPD have shifted schedules and paid overtime to increase night patrols.
“We want the campus to be safe and to feel safe,” DPS Associate Director Tom Hicks said. “There are certainly other things that can be done. Public safety can be more visible, and we can have more people out there.”
University administrators, student leaders, EPD and DPS representatives will discuss recent attacks, security reforms and proposals at 5:30 p.m. today in the Knight Library Browsing Room. Participants will also listen to public input.
ASUO Vice President Joy Nair said the University is moving in the right direction by assessing campus safety but cautioned that she would reserve congratulations until talk yields action. She criticized the University for waiting to address the issue.
“I don’t think the University has been proactive enough,” she said. “They had to wait for something to happen.”
In the past two years, at least eight women have been attacked while walking through campus, and the frequency of public indecency and masturbation reports has increased in recent months.
The campus community has responded strongly, with increased calls to the administration and two large protests in March. On March 5, the largest and loudest demonstration had dozens of whistle-blowing marchers walking through the heart of campus — and the foyer of Johnson Hall.
One organizer of the protest, Lezlie Frye, said she’s pleased that the University is “finally beginning to make some sort of effort to improve women’s safety on campus,” but added that she is “hesitant to pat them on the back before anything changes.”
Frye, a junior studying history and women’s studies, said the University’s approach of upping patrols and increasing lighting merely “puts a Band-Aid” over the broader problems of a “rape culture and the entitlement men feel to attack women.”
She suggested the University invest in enlarging the women’s studies department and campus organizations to educate the community about safety, equality and respect.
For now, however, the University’s approach is pursuing three key goals: Improving lighting, increasing patrols and broadening communication between public safety agencies and the public.
Illuminated corridors
The University’s campus lighting campaign gained momentum in spring 2001 when the ASUO allocated $150,000 to the project. A team of University planners, administrators, DPS officers and faculty and student representatives drafted a plan that would created a series of lighted corridors through campus.
“We decided not to just stick a light fixture here and there. We decided to give this a comprehensive approach,” said Christine Thompson, a University planning associate, who added that attacks have occurred in well-lighted areas of campus also.
The plan would install new fixtures to enhance the existing system and create illuminated pathways snaking around student housing, through class buildings and toward the corners of campus. The routes of these pathways were chosen to provide as much access as possible, Thompson said. Also, DPS recommended further lighting areas where attacks occurred.
Almost a year after the project received funding, a campus planning subcommittee met April 4 for the first time to address the final obstacles to the plan’s approval.
Last year, Eugene enacted a land use code that included a provision requiring new lights on campus to beam rays downward. This made the University’s acorn-shaped lamp lenses obsolete, forcing campus planners to shop for a new fixture.
“The reason we haven’t proceeded for the most part is a technical issue,” Thompson said.
Thompson said the proposed routes might gain approval at an April 24 meeting of a University campus planning committee.
Expanded policing
Although the effort to improve lighting started more than a year ago, DPS and EPD have made more immediate changes in their patrols in response to the most recent spate of attacks.
In the past month, DPS has shifted officer schedules and hired two more student patrollers to cover night shifts in the University’s residence halls, near the Pioneer Cemetery, around the School of Music and throughout the EMU area.
“The problem is that the demand for public safety is pretty much consistent 24 hours a day,” Hicks said. “It’s difficult to short one shift to staff another.”
To overcome this problem, DPS wants to create a force of volunteers who would be equipped with radios and trained to watch for crime. These volunteers, who will be known as Yellowjackets, will act as extended eyes and ears for DPS, Hicks said.
The EPD has also increased the number of officers on campus at night. During the past three weeks, the five-member EPD campus team has logged more than 40 hours of overtime covering campus, Sgt. Kris Martes said.
Also, the department has assigned plainclothes undercover officers to survey places on campus where women were attacked. So far, the undercover officers have approached a few people acting suspiciously, Martes said. In another new development in EPD’s campus program, a team of retirees has volunteered to drive through campus in a marked EPD truck to increase police visibility and to possibly spot a crime in progress.
Improved publicity
Since last year, DPS has posted bulletins that include descriptions of campus attacks, updates on investigations and tips for avoiding attacks. The department also posts its dispatch records in its office and on its Web site.
Still, Hicks said DPS’s message doesn’t reach enough students. He said he hopes to leave tonight’s forum with new ideas about how to inform people of crimes and crime prevention.
EPD officers are also considering new means for public communication and will enter tonight’s forum with open minds, Martes said, adding that police would likely work with DPS on any new programs.
LIGHTING: University officials question the ASUO’s interest in the campus lighting project
Members of a planning subcommittee charged with fine-tuning the University’s new outdoor lighting system said participation in the program from ASUO President Nilda Brooklyn and Vice President Joy Nair has declined in recent months.
“We have tried and tried to have consistent input. … We have had very limited success,” University planning associate Christine Thompson said at the subcommittee’s April 4 meeting. “They’ve been invited to every meeting.”
ASUO Vice President Joy Nair, who was in the ASUO office during the April 4 meeting, said she didn’t receive an invitation.
She said the ASUO’s advisory role in the lighting project had been filled and that she was satisfied with allowing University administration to make the remaining decisions. The ASUO allocated the funds, recommended some light placements and is now done with the project, Nair said.
“We had clearly given the input that was asked of us,” she said.
DPS Associate Director Tom Hicks said that this year’s ASUO Executive has become less active.
“At the beginning of the year, ASUO was pretty involved in looking at how the money should be spent and where to put some lights,” Hicks said. “But I haven’t seen that level of participation in recent months.”
E-mail community editor Darren Freeman
at darrenfreeman@dailyemer
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