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Margolis featured in Hartford Courant article on campus safety

Colleges, Universities Face Difficult Decisions To Keep Open Campuses Safe

By KATHLEEN MEGAN and GRACE E. MERRITT

October 24, 2009

For colleges and universities, it is always a challenge: balancing the desire to welcome the public to campus events with the need to protect the safety of the school community.

The stabbing death early Sunday of University of Connecticut football cornerback Jasper Howard has put the spotlight on this longtime source of tension.

“We are not a gated community,” said John Saddlemire, UConn’s vice president for student affairs. “We know there will be students, guests of students. There will be people who want to come and be part of the event.”

Safety at all of these events “is always a concern of ours,” said Saddlemire. “We have a very thorough process any organized event goes through to make sure we have adequate security.”

All the usual security measures appear to have been followed for the party that Howard attended before he was stabbed outside UConn’s Student Union. But a homicide still occurred at about 12:30 a.m. after a fire alarm was pulled and 300 people poured out of the building.

After an apparent argument, Howard was stabbed fatally in the abdomen, while another student, Brian Parker, a redshirt freshman, was also stabbed, but not lethally. Since then, police have questioned, but not arrested, a Bloomfield man about his possible role in the stabbings. The man’s attorney, Deron Freeman, did not identify his client, but did say earlier this week that he was one of four men UConn police view as “main suspects.”

Staff from UConn and other colleges and experts on campus security say maintaining an open campus while ensuring safety is a difficult but vital balancing act.

About 80 percent of crimes on campuses are committed by students against other students; the rest are committed by a mix of non-students, including outsiders and staff, according to S. Daniel Carter, public policy director at Security On Campus Inc., a national nonprofit devoted to safer campuses.

Gary Margolis, a campus security consultant and former police chief at the University of Vermont, said the UConn death also follows a pattern he believes may be prevalent: violent crime following the end of a campus party or dance.

There may well be many such crimes, but little research has been done on the subject, Margolis said. Besides Sunday’s homicide at UConn, there have been at least three such campus crimes in the U.S. in the past decade.

In 1999, at Trinity College in Hartford, a student was killed by a visitor following an argument after a party.

In 2003, two people were shot after a party at Rider University in New Jersey. In 2006, a teen shot five university basketball players after a dance at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

“When you mix young men, egos, alcohol, drugs and weapons, that’s when the opportunity arises,” said Margolis, who is studying the subject. “Whatever they were doing inside the venue is now going on outside the venue.”

No ‘Fortress Walls’

UConn has been wrestling with the issue of outsiders coming on campus for parties for years every April when thousands of guests, outsiders and high school students throng to Spring Weekend parties on and off campus.

In recent years, the university has been trying to “take back” Spring Weekend by stressing to students and the public that the weekend is really a celebration for UConn students, not outsiders.

The parties have swelled to more than 20,000 on certain nights, at times leading to fights, overturned cars, dumpster fires, injuries, sexual assault and dozens of arrests. Three years ago, there was a concern about gangs attending Spring Weekend and there was a stabbing at one of the off-campus parties, Mansfield Fire Chief Dave Dagon said.

Carter, of Security On Campus Inc., said that part of the trouble with overseeing outsiders is that very often the guests on campus look just like the students.

“Sometimes they may be up to no good or have ill intentions,” Carter said of the visitors, “but it is very difficult to know that, particularly if they are guests of the students.”

Other public and private universities have the same concerns.

“Our Memorial Union Building is really the equivalent to the Main Street of a small town,” said Paul Dean, deputy chief of police at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, N.H. “It’s like the hub of what takes place and is meant to encourage people to come in and take part in what the university has to offer. So trying to keep people out flies in the face of trying to keep an open campus.”

At Trinity College, spokeswoman Michele Jacklin said, “We remain committed to being as open as we can be, while keeping our students safe and secure.”

University of Hartford spokesman David Isgur said, “To most colleges’ credit, we err on the side of being open because that is part of our function — for the open exchange of ideas and thoughts. It’s hard to encourage that while at the same time setting up fortress walls around you.”

New Worries

Michael Carson, a sophomore from Naugatuck who is part of the organization that plans concerts and lectures on campus, said outsiders are “not something people worry about. But now with the incident, it may be something brought up more.”

Thomas Haggerty, president of the Undergraduate Student Government, said that until last weekend, he thought of outsiders as simply “other people’s friends from other campuses” and not a source for concern except on Spring Weekend.

“I think events like this are going to cause people to re-look at the things we do,” said Haggerty. “Arguably, this happened in one of the safest places on campus. ... Nobody could have expected this to happen.”

Danielle Monsiegneur, a junior and residential area counselor from Suffield, said she has always felt that campus safety is good and never had a concern about outsiders when she has planned movies and parties.

But after Howard’s death, she said, “I definitely think there will be more concern about outsiders. I think security will be tightened and everyone will be comforted by that.

“Everyone is a little freaked out right now. I never felt unsafe before at an event. ... But after this, it makes you feel a little unsafe. It makes you think a little more about it.”

Questions For Police

Some students have said the handling of the aftermath of the crime added to their fear. Howard was stabbed at about 12:30 a.m., but students say they didn’t get a text message from police alerting them to the situation until sometime between 2 and 3 a.m.

Several were also concerned that the state police were apparently not called in to assist in the situation until about two hours after the stabbing occurred. State police sources told The Courant Monday they were perplexed that UConn police did not call for assistance when more than a half-dozen troopers were monitoring off-campus parties a mile away from the Student Union when Howard was stabbed.

“I felt less safe knowing the emergency wasn’t handled that well,” said Melissa Dortenzio, a junior from Stratford. “We were not notified right away. ... I think they assumed nothing else was going to happen.”

Lt. Andrew Fournier, of the university police, said there was no delay in either texting of information about the crime or in the calling of state police.

He said the university police did everything as soon as possible “considering our response to the incident, and the initial investigation was absolutely our primary concern.”

Although it appears that police have been questioning an outsider about the case, Fournier said an “active investigation” is underway and no assumptions can be made about who might have committed the crime.

Security At The Party

Saddlemire said all the normal security steps were followed Saturday night at the party sponsored by the West Indian Student Awareness Organization. All guests had to show a photo identification card, whether they were students or non-students. At some events, Saddlemire said, non-students must be accompanied by students; at this party, non-students could come on their own.

All guests’ purses and bags were checked, guests were patted down, and pockets were turned inside out, he said. There were no metal detectors.

University police, along with employees of a private security firm, were on hand, Saddlemire said.

He also noted that not everyone who came to the party was actually admitted because at a certain point, the venue had reached capacity. For that reason, he said it is possible that the perpetrator did not actually go to the party, but was outside the Student Union. He said the matter is all under investigation.

Saddlemire said safety has always been the university’s No. 1 priority. In the wake of last weekend’s crime, he said, security procedures will be reviewed and will be improved if needed.

Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant