Last Wednesday, October 17, the Student Senate held a community safety forum in the Bruggeman Conference Room of the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies. The Senate invited members from both RPI and the community to discuss the recent string of robberies that has occurred in the vicinity of campus and how to best prevent such crimes from happening on- and off-campus.
A handful of senators attended the forum as well as a variety of administrators, including Director of Public Safety Jerry Matthews, Vice President for Student Life Eddie Ade Knowles, Vice President for Administration Claude Rounds, Director of the Union Rick Hartt ’70, Dean of Students Mark Smith, Assistant Dean of Students Cynthia Smith, Activities Coordinator Cameron McLean, and Investigator for Public Safety Terrance Burns.
In addition to representatives from RPI, several community members attended the forum, including Mayor of Troy Harry Tutunjian, Assistant Principal of Troy High School Brian Dunn, Principal of Doyle Middle School Diane Germain, and several officials from the Troy Police Department.
Grand Marshal Julia Leusner ’08 opened the forum by welcoming the guests and providing an overview of what the Senate members hoped to address during the forum—more specifically what can be done about the string of crimes around campus.
The meeting began with a round-table discussion focused on how the community, including both RPI and Troy in general, can be made safer. Matthews started off the discussion by reviewing the string of nine robberies that had occurred around the RPI campus, and what Public Safety has been doing to address the incidents. He called the incidents part of a “spike,” since there were a large number within a short period of time. Matthews stated, “We really need to keep safety awareness at an increased level on campus.”
“We want to help students change their views on safety,” said Knowles. He suggested floor meetings for residence halls as a way of informing students living on-campus, as well as having meetings for members of fraternities and sororities who live off-campus. “This will serve to help inform our students and reinforce our message,” Knowles added.
Rounds felt that part of the problem lies in communication issues that need to be resolved. “We can’t convey the message if we can’t get people into a room,” he said. “We need a more aggressive and more successful outreach program.” Rounds suggested a block program for the Rape Awareness Defense class during Navigating Rensselaer and Beyond for both women and men.
August Fietkau ’08, co-chair of the Finance, Facilities, and Advancement Committee on the Student Senate, also tied in the subject of a meeting the Senate held with Secretary of the Institute and General Counsel Charles Carletta which dealt with obtaining contact information for students. Fietkau stated, “If we can’t get to students in an emergency, how will we communicate to them about these crimes and what’s going on around campus?”
When the discussion turned to what can be done to prevent these crimes, Kevin Rodrigo ’10, member of the Community Relations Committee, inquired if there were after school programs that provided more for teens to do. Dunn and Germain replied that a large percentage of their students do participate in sports and other programs. Germain said, “We have lots of activities that students can choose to get involved in.” “We want to play a positive role to encourage students to stray away from this spike in crimes, from an educational perspective,” added Dunn.
Following the round-table discussion, those present broke into two working groups to discuss deterrence and enforcement. The deterrence group focused on what can be done to discourage youths from engaging in crime to begin with, and the enforcement group tackled how the campus community can assist TPD and Public Safety.
Among other things, students plan to work on strengthening lines of communication between students, law enforcement agencies, and the Public Safety Department. They also discussed cleaning up off-campus sites and expanding RPI’s existing tutor programs with younger students to include mentoring activities.
“I thought the forum was an excellent demonstration of our student government identifying a problem, stepping up to the plate, and addressing it,” said Leusner. “There were a lot of good solutions that resulted from the intense, three-hour discussion, and many of the people present at the Community Safety Forum have already committed to helping out in one way or another, as we realized this situation was affecting us all.”
Matthews said, “It was great to have a cross section of the Troy and Rensselaer community come together to discuss the common problem regarding safety for all.”
