The Student Senate passed a resolution calling on the City of Troy to end “the continued harassment of RPI students.”
The resolution was prompted in part by reports of the presidents of Sigma Epsilon and Pi Kappa Alpha being arrested in recent weeks over noise ordinance violations.
Before the start of the school year, the Troy City Council expanded the authority of police officers when responding to noise complaints. Instead of giving a number of verbal warnings before issuing a citation, officers are now allowed to issue citations when they arrive at the scene of a compliant. The City Council passed the expanded authority ordinance because “throughout the city there was a noise and the way the law was written it was difficult for officers to issue citations,” said City Council President Harry Tuntunjian.
Feedback from students introduced at the meeting suggested that the Troy Police Department was using noise ordinance violations to enter the housing of greek and other off-campus students to conduct wider ordinance violation searches.
“It is important for the Senate to lead and to speak for students concerns,” said 2005 Senator Micheal Dillion who, introduced the resolution.
The strongly-worded Senate resolution passed in a 19-0-0 roll call vote. The resolution called on the Troy Police to give adequate warning before enforcing the ordinance. The Senate also demanded that the Dean of Students Office, President Shirley Ann Jackson, and the entire administration act as advocates on behalf of students by publicly supporting the rights of students and fighting harassment from the police. Finally, the Senate demanded that Troy’s mayor and City Council acknowledge and respect student’s rights.
Mayor Mark Pattison, in response to the resolution, contended he does not believe that there is any harassment of RPI students occurring. “We’re interested in enhancing the quality of life of all citizens, including students. We’ve given notice, we’ve been very clear that we’re going to enforce the ordinance for everyone,” said Pattison.
“There was a general consensus that the Senate voted in favor of the resolution because it believes the Troy Police Department should not be singling out any individual for a noise violation without notice—this goes beyond students’ rights; it goes to our fundamental rights as American citizens,” said class of 2005 Senator Peter Naccarato.
Dillion echoed Naccarato, “you can’t pass a law and selectively enforce it. The day they arrest someone’s father for a noise complaint is the day this law is repealed.”
The Senate also discussed the Student Life forum held last Wednesday in its meeting. Campus safety issues and parking concerns dominated the student senate’s first student life forum of the year.
According to Public Safety officers, serious crime has been up around campus, especially on weekends. “The most common type of crime committed toward students is theft,” stated Joe Audino, a Public Safety officer. He also goes on to say that “we do have a shared responsibility in preventing these crimes by hardening the target and reducing or eliminating opportunity.”
Community policing involves an entirely different approach to safety and crime and they are calling it Community Outreach Programming, according to Officer Audino. The program involves “Directed patrols with specific missions; it may also involve specific enforcement of laws and campus regulations, based on specific reported problems by the community that need to be dealt with in order to maintain or improve the quality of life on campus.”
According to Audino “there is no need to walk alone at night, the maximum wait for a Public Saftey escort is fifteen minutes.”
The safety escort service is where “any member of our community can call Public Safety at x6656 and request a personal escort from one campus location to another. This service includes a point to point service approximately up to five minutes distance off campus.”
Overall Audino felt “the forum was organized and went well.” He went on to say that “although we were expecting a larger turnout, I never get too disappointed at the lack of a large audience, you have to look at the type of university we are and the fact that students, faculty, and staff are extremely hard-working and busy people. What it means to me is we have to work that much harder at getting people interested and communicating important matters in a way that gets results.”
Another area in which Public Safety is working to improve the safety of students is in the lighting here on campus.
Several students have expressed their concern regarding lighting. Of main concern is the JEC bus stop area.
Bernie Drobnicki, director of public safety, stated “lighting [on campus] has been the focal point for years and we have been conducting lighting surveys with faculty and staff.”
An idea that has been suggested for the start of fixing the lighting problem is to display a poster in the Union to show where lighting can be improved.
The final portion of the meeting was dominated with concern over parking, and the new campus Red Hawk shuttle.
At the forum, students asked about the chance of extending routes and hours of the shuttle service after 11 pm. According to Carol Wager, “Red Hawk Shuttle was first only to operate between the hours of 7 am to 7 pm It has been extended to 11 pm. We are not currently budgeted to operate longer hours.”
She thinks that the forum went very well and stated “I enjoy this type of interaction because it enables the students to get to know me and I get to know the students.”
According to senator Anna Batorsky “Carol Wagar was sincere in her response—a lot of people had their questions on parking answered.”
Her overall thoughts on the Forum were that the “response we got from Public Safety officers were sincere, they definitely addressed all the concerns we had. They addressed the specific issues in detail as well as areas for improvement.”
Parking has been an issue for most of the students due to the construction going on.
The main complaint has been empty parking lots. To help with this particular parking issue here on campus Public Safety will install gates in the parking lots and the open spaces will be used for visitor parking.
Some students, mostly upperclassmen, expressed their annoyance at the yellow yield signs in the middle of the pedestrian crosswalks.
“They have served their purpose—they slowed down traffic and increased pedestrian safety at crosswalks and intersections,” said Wager. Because of winter weather and snow removal the signs will be removed in the near future, added Wager.
“The forum succeeded and addressed numerous concerns of students. Although the turnout wasn’t large we succeeded in getting students points across through the senate,” said Naccarato.
Senate Resolution We, the Student Senate of RPI, call for the end of the continued harassment and arrests of RPI students by the City of Troy. We believe that it is unacceptable for the Troy Police to arrest students in violation of the newly enforced noise ordinance, without first giving adaquate warning. We demand that the Dean of Students Office, President Shirley Ann Jackson, and the entire Adminis-tration publicly support the rights of the student body and fight the continued harassment from the Troy Police. We also demand that the Mayor of Troy and the Troy City Council both acknowledge and respect student’s rights. Passed 19-0-0 on October 28, 2002.
