Most people think college campuses across the U.S. are generally safe.
Although relatively minor cases of theft or assault are common across campuses, it is not every day that we hear about atrocious crimes in universities.
Tragedies like the shootings that happened at Virginia Tech in 2007 are statistical outliers.
That is why I was shocked, saddened and repulsed when I heard about the most recent instance of campus crime at Yale University.
Annie Le, a graduate student studying pharmacology who went missing Sept. 8, was last seen entering a lab building. Her body was found six days later, the day she was to be married, shoved inside a wall of that building.
From what the news stories have reported so far, campus security could not have done much to prevent the incident, since they could not have predicted the crime. Le had never filed any complaints.
According to the New York Times, Chief James Lewis of the New Haven police said investigators “had taken about 150 items from the crime scene with potential DNA evidence they could compare … (and) had interviewed 150 people and watched 700 hours of surveillance video from cameras in and around the building where the body of Ms. Le was found.”
I couldn’t help but wonder: Wouldn’t the search for the person who murdered this woman be over by now if there had been cameras inside the building?
But this reminded me of being in high school again, where metal detectors welcomed you every morning and hundreds of cameras followed you around like you were on a reality TV show.
It seems that the sense of adulthood and trustworthiness that we gain when we start our college careers would somehow be in jeopardy if we were to be treated like we were treated when we were 15 years old.
But maybe it’s necessary after all.
Are we willing to be treated like children for the sake of security?
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We are already followed by cameras almost everywhere else we go. Streets, schools, government buildings and businesses like banks, restaurants and movie theaters record us constantly.
What difference would it make if college campuses started using the same methods to achieve safety?
Campus crime seems to be more of an issue than most think it is. Just in the last month, a woman was shot and killed on the University of California, Irvine campus, a Tennessee State University research worker was stabbed multiple times and beaten to death, and three people were shot at Florida A&M University after a football game.
Although each of these incidents is probably isolated and rare for the specific campuses, acts like these seem to be far too common when aggregated.
The U.S. Department of Education published new proposed regulations Wednesday morning that would overhaul the methods used at universities for reporting and dealing with crimes on campus.
Although standardizing reporting and investigating procedures would be a step toward clearing the way for a more efficient and safe process, is this really going to stop crime? Will it make it easier to catch the perpetrators?
Although upping campus surveillance doesn’t seem like it should really offend anyone, considering that we are videotaped almost everywhere else, I’m not sure that kind of change would garner a lot of support.
But if brutal and inhumane acts continue to occur on college campuses around the country, I’m afraid that law enforcement agencies, the community and the students will have no other option but to accept that another part of their lives will be captured on camera for the safety of their peers.
Adelin Grema is a columnist for The Rebel Yell, serving the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in Las Vegas.
