Some Residence Life Issues

I’ll start of this week’s post with some up-dates:

Two students were shot on the campus of Delaware State University last Friday (September 21^st) in the early morning. The campus was immediately “closed” and resident students were asked to stay in their rooms as the shooter(s) remained at large. Classes were cancelled for Friday and Saturday. The following appeared on the InsideHigerEd.com website on Monday:

“Delaware State University plans to be open, with a normal class schedule today. The university called off all classes Friday and Saturday, and ordered students to stay in their dormitory rooms after the shootings of two students early Friday morning. The News Journal reported that authorities are investigating the possibility that geography-based rivalries among students (the two who were shot are from Washington) may have played a role in the shootings.”

I will continue to monitor this shooting to see how security features, put in place after the Virginia Tech shootings, were implemented.

In news closer to home, two men accused of the rapes in the residence at York University have been arrested. As suspected, the men have a connection to the university, with at least a general knowledge of its security features. The two suspects are looking for bail – an unlikely outcome if you ask me.

The Monday after the sexual assaults at York, a “journalist” from the local television station followed a student into a McMaster residence before the door could shut (a stunt called “tailgating”). The cameraman then proceeded to the third floor and took video to show viewers “how easy it is”. Needless to say the university was not impressed. This was the second time in a week that the station was accused of creating news. Liberal Party spokesman, Ben Chin, accused the station of “micing” a local developer as he confronted the Premier during a campaign stop. It should also be noted that the station has recently gone to the E! format where entertainment is king. It sounds like they are also trying to create their own news.

In its October 1^st edition, Macleans magazine’s Nancy MacDonald has the article “A Lock Cause” which deals with the York rapes and has quotes from several students (mostly from UBC) as well as administrators. I found two paragraphs very revealing and am reprinting here (from the on-line version): “There are posters up, but I don’t know what they say; I haven’t read them,” says Stephanie Parisotto, in her second year at UBC. “It’s one of those things you hear all the time,” admits Jessica, an 18-year-old UBC student from Calgary. “I’m like: ‘Yeah, yeah.’ ” Jessica never locks up — even before going to sleep. “It doesn’t cross my mind to lock the door; I know the people on my floor.” That’s a risk Alex Ivey, 19, says she would never take. “But some kids forget,” Ivey says. “They’ve been out drinking; they walk in, close the door, and go to sleep.” To Alex, a first-year UBC student who asked that her last name not be used, the open door policy is about comfort: “It’s wanting to treat res like your home, and your floor mates like your friends.” After class, Alex routinely props her own door open, inviting her floor mates to stop by. But even comfort has a limit. She always locks up before bed.

The troubling part of the quotes is that they would be repeated verbatim at every university in the country. The fact is that residents initially do not know their floor mates – particularly during move-in or during Welcome Week. Secondly, the naïveté of the students is alarming. Just because a person is a floor mate doesn’t mean that he or she wouldn’t steal from you (or worse). And finally, propping doors open is just plain illegal most of the time. Residence doors frequently have closers on them for fire safety reasons. Doors that open into hallways simply cannot be propped open. No one can predict when a fire will break out. There have been plenty of dormitory fires and those of us in the student housing business will always put students’ safety and security ahead of perceived issues of community.

I will write about Facebook in a future posting but an article by Erin Millar in the October 1^st Macleans also contained some troubling notions regarding a new use of this web tool. The article deals with the potential for using Facebook as a means of screening roommates. Although this idea has some potential for good, the downside is too scary to think about. The article has a good balance of pro and con but I was struck by this paragraph:

“But sometimes parents’ concerns turn out to be legitimate. Terry Calhoun, director of communications and publications for the Michigan-based Society for College and University Planning, described a case where a parent requested a switch after stumbling across troubling information about his child’s future roommate. “This was not a case of religious or racial bias, however,” Calhoun wrote. “It was more serious than that. It was the kind of stuff that, in the wake of the Virginia Tech killings, sends shudders though parents’ and administrators’ bodies.” The page in question was, as Calhoun’s colleague put it, “some sort of paean to automatic weapons, explosives, violence and destruction.”

Frankly I can see both sides of this concern. What parent would want their son or daughter paired with a psychopath? But that begs a more realistic situation. What about a potential room-mate with a disability or a mental health issue, for example? Would we allow students to decline these room-mates? It is not uncommon these days for young students (mostly female but some males as well) to “self harm” or literally cut themselves. Some of these students would even put pictures of themselves or blogs on social networking websites. What should happen if a student discovers that a potential room-mate is a “cutter”? On the other hand, what should housing personnel do when one of two room-mates who have been randomly put together practices self-harm? What about the feelings of the other room-mate who doesn’t want to witness it or doesn’t want the responsibility of “looking after” his or her room mate? As a parent I’m not sure about that one either.

The article goes on to question whether or not universities would rescind offers made to students if they found out through Facebook that an applicant was deviant and, shouldn’t universities be “routinely researching applicants this way?” The answer is No! McMaster University would make about 20,000 offers of admission in a given year – this suggestion is implausible. The other thing to note is that students tend to inflate things that they write about. I tell students all the time that I will not be trolling on Facebook! They seem to appreciate that. The last sentence of Erin Millar’s article sums it up best from a student’s point of view: “just don’t look”.

Another item that I will post on in the future is text book prices. It seems that this issue is reaching a head in the state of California where ccompeting bills to deal with student complaints about textbook prices arrived simultaneously on the governor’s desk, as the Los Angeles Times reported. Both bills would require more disclosure about changes made from one edition to another, but one bill (backed by student groups) would require more than the other (backed by publishers).

There is no doubt that text book prices are increasing. The culprits are publishers who bring out new editions too frequently and also professors who don’t always look for less expensive alternatives. Students though don’t understand the notions of intellectual property or copyright. It is simply illegal to post large sections of published material on-line. Professors though can post their own notes and even links to other websites containing information. There will be a round-table in Toronto on November 21^st to 23^rd involving book publishers, book store operators and student unions. As I said above, more on this later.

Town and Gown

Many McMaster students live in the neighbourhood surrounding the university. These students intersect with the local community every single day. It must be very difficult for our neighbours because their schedules are so much different from those of a typical student. I know this first hand because both of my sons live in the neighbourhood – one as a student and one (with his wife) as a permanent resident. Indeed both have lived in Westdale and Ainslie Wood for several years at a variety of addresses. When I was looking for a house in 1982 I considered Westdale. The neighbourhood had lots of appeal especially because it was so close to work. Ultimately I thought that it would be better for me (and my then very young family) to live a little farther away. Many McMaster faculty and staff members tough do live in the immediate neighbourhood so I am constantly being up-dated of the goings on.The neighbourhood around McMaster University is known as Ainslie Wood/Westdale. It is in the west end of Hamilton and indeed is often referred to as West Hamilton. The village of Westdale is a great place to live. There’s a number of shops with great appeal to students and permanent residents alike – things like bars, coffee shops, a theatre, clothing stores, a Pita Pit and even a cup-cake store. It has a number of fine old homes with relatively affluent inhabitants who live adjacent to the university and have a disproportionate amount of influence with our local city councilor and city hall generally.

On the other hand, the Ainslie Wood area, particularly Ainslie Wood East is known by the students at least as, “the ghetto”. It has given over almost entirely to student housing with fewer high-end houses and commensurately less influence with the councilor. That is, the councilor doesn’t appear to represent the student interests at all. Students though really seem to enjoy living in this neighbourhood as most of their neighbours are also students.

A new development in Ainslie Wood North was the recent building of the West Village Condos. This is a privately owned student residence with beds for 450 students. A previous student union president was hired to market the property and he was successful in filling it by mid summer. The building was not completed on time creating hiccups in early September but construction is continuing and it looks like it will be really nice when it’s done. A second private residence is planned for Ainslie Wood West – right across the street from a gigantic grocery store and gigantic (but closed) bar. I went to a neighbourhood meeting in the Spring where agents for the developer discussed the magnitude of the building and the additional traffic that would be created. The developer already has similar facilities in London, Ontario but the proposal was given a very rough ride by the neighbours who, at the time, were watching the West Village Condos going up and were imaging a potential addition of approximately 1000 students to the neighbourhood.

Last night was the 9^th Annual General Meeting of the Ainslie Wood/Westdale Community Association (AWWCA) – our local neighbourhood association. The highlight of the meeting was to be a presentation by Hamilton mayor Fred Eisenberger “Achieving Town and Gown Balance in Ainslie Wood and Westdale”. That’s not what he talked about actually. That address was given by the out-going President of the AWWCA – a theme of previous communications. The mayor talked about how great Hamilton is (using parts of a speech that I heard him give earlier in the day to the Chamber of Commerce). A major feature of the meeting was a Q&A with various stakeholders – for example police, by-law enforcement, fire inspection, the city councilor and the university’s vp responsible for town and gown relations. The councilor seemed extraordinarily proud of a proactive by-law enforcement policy described here. This was also coupled with an increased police presence and applied during the weekend of Welcome Week. The results of the sweep as reported to me were as follows:

Liquor tickets issued: 57

Addresses charged under the Noise By-Law: one residence was issued 4 – $120.00 tickets another residence was issued 6 – $120.00 tickets

Other residences on: Sterling St., Thornedale Cres., Traymore Ave., Westwood Ave. and Wilmont Ct.

38 other residences were given their first warnings and added to the Proactive Noise list with the Charged residences.

The City issued 13 Seven day Orders to Comply for yard conditions.

City also issued 59 Notices to Comply for waste violations.

Police seemed quite “happy” with those numbers whatever that means. Not everybody was impressed with this show of force however. Joey Coleman, a McMaster student who writes a blog for Macleans posted the story he called “Priorities, Priorities“.

The Ainslie Wood/Westdale area is not a high crime area in Hamilton. Regular crime reports in the Hamilton Spectator document this. Joey resents the proactive enforcement around the university while the real crime hotspots in Hamilton (where he was born and raised) are under-policed. (Re-read what I said above about undue influence in some neighbourhoods Joey).

Certainly the university has grown significantly over the past five years (by more than 50% in numbers) and relationships between “town and gown” can get strained. We are constant educating our students on how to be better neighbours between our Off-Campus Resource Centre and the student union run Student Support Network (SCSN). The university and the community have also been proactive in working together towards the betterment of Town and Gown relations. The President’s Advisory Committee on Community Relations (PACCR) was created in ??? with the mission to:

Mission

• To evaluate and improve upon the role of McMaster University as a neighbourhood partner in the Hamilton community
• To act as an open and visible means for ongoing community liaison in order to maintain and improve relations between the University and its neighbouring community
• To identify areas of common interest and concern between major University activities and the neighbouring community, and to develop proposals for action to promote co-operation and mutual understanding

The committee is jointly chaired by a university representative and a community representative with representation from the various stakeholders from the community and campus. A complete list of committee members is available on the PACCR website.

Outside of PACCR, McMaster University, working in partnership with the McMaster Students Union (MSU)has taken several steps to improve the safety and security of McMaster students. It was through an initiative of the MSU that a community policing centre was established in Westdale in partnership with Hamilton Police Services (HPS). McMaster University and the MSU have also partnered with HPS to have paid-duty police officers patrolling the neighbourhood on pub nights (Thursday, Friday and Saturday). This sounds like an idea that the City of Saint Catharines and Brock University might like to consider based on a recent report in Standard! Our most recent initiative, and one that Student Affairs is piloting is our “Community Accountability Program” that is described in detail here. CAP is a program to help students, staff, police and local residents deal constructively with minor violations of the law. Instead of ending up with a criminal charge students sanctioned under CAP can be held responsible for their actions and make restitution in cases where relevant.

Building Town and Gown relations is an ongoing job at the university and it has assigned considerable resources to it. It was refreshing to hear from those in the know that the communication between the university and the neighbourhood is the best in the province and has lead a community member to form the Town and Gown Association of Ontario (TGAO). We are not alone in our efforts to provide a safe, habitable environment for our students while trying to maintain a neighbourhood that permanent residents are pleased and proud to live in. In addition to problems in St. Catharines there have been recent reports of problems in London, Kingston and Waterloo. In many ways, we in Hamilton are leading the province in Town and Gown relations.

As for me, as Dean of students I get involved in all aspects of student life – particularly in off-campus student life. This is a picture of me in a pasta eating contest at a recent street festival in Westdale. The MSU also brought their final event from Welcome Week (called “Shine-off” a fund raiser for cystic fibrosis) into the community in an attempt to involve the community into their lives. One local group that loves students is the Westdale BIA. What merchants wouldn’t like to have 20,000 customers plunked into their neighbourhood?

Safety and Security

Today is the first anniversary of the shootings at Dawson College in Montreal. In the year since we have witnessed the even more horrific shootings at Virginia Tech University (VTU). Thus this was the first orientation week at universities since these incidents. In the United States this is big news. The USA Today recently published the article: “Campus Safety Tops Orientation Agendas”. The article describes how several universities in the U.S. are communicating with students and parents about safety and security and also describes several new innovations that have been put in place to aid in rapid communication with student, staff and faculty.

I was, however, struck by the sentence – “But other schools…including the University of Florida and Georgia Tech…reported that that parents turned out not to be as inquisitive as they expected”. Florida and Georgia Tech are large, southern universities (similar in size to and scope VTU actually) so that comment might seem surprising but it is consistent with our experience here at McMaster. During Welcome Day on August 10^th, I Chaired two sessions for parents entitled: “Health, Safety and Security: Info for Parents”. The sessions were not well attended and there were essentially no questions related to the VTU or Dawson College incidents.

That doesn’t mean that McMaster or the other Ontario Universities are not doing anything about safety and security in the wake of VTU. On Tuesday August 7^th I represented McMaster at the Council of Ontario Universities: “Security Issues Roundtable”. The majority of the attendees were Security Directors from all 18 Ontario universities and the roundtable was chaired by Dr. Jack Lightstone, President of Brock University. Ontario universities are working together to develop best practices for dealing with security issues of all kinds and will be making a united pitch to government to improve their emergency response systems. A number of methods were discussed at the roundtable including mass text messaging systems and different campus bell tones. There also exists new technology for flashing messages to students and faculty over campus computer networks as well as making every phone on campus a PA speaker. Of course all of this technology costs money – money that universities don’t presently have – so direct funding from the government for this project will be a requirement. The University of Calgary has launched an emergency text messaging system that we will be observing to see if it is something that would be practical for McMaster.

Ontario Universities have not been immune to gross breaches of their safety and security. Two of our sister universities had sexual assaults one week apart in early September. These have rocked the Student Affairs community where our goal is always to protect the safety and security of our students. We truly believe that an attack on one is an attack on us all and so we have tremendous empathy for our colleagues and the students at our sister schools. These latest attacks have been a stern reminder to us to redouble our efforts to protect our students, staff and faculty.

The simple truth is that it is impossible to prevent the outside world from intruding on the campus. University campuses are typically very open places. Anyone can enter our campus freely from the surrounding streets and on any given day there will be upwards of twenty five thousand people here. One area where we do limit access however is Housing. Residence Life staff undergo two weeks of intensive training – with a focus on safety and security. A proximity card is required to gain access to a residence and resident students are told to lock their doors and also to watch out for people trying to sneak in behind them – a practice called “tailgating”. Residence entrances, hallways and common areas are monitored by CCTVs which have been successful in helping to apprehend perpetrators. In all, there are more than 10 safety features in residences but they aren’t useful if residents don’t lock their doors and watch out for one another. In the wake of the most recent incidents we have begun a poster campaign and are using floor meetings to continue the program of educating students.

Even though there have been a number of sexual assaults reported this month, university campuses are still considered to be very safe places to live and work. In terms of violent crimes (robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault against students), a 2005 U.S. Department of Justice study by Katrina Baum and Patsy Klaus (Statisticians for the Bureau of Justice Statistics) reported that:

For the period 1995 to 2002, college students ages 18 to 24 experienced violence at average annual rates lower than those for non-students in the same age group (61 per 1,000 students versus 75 per 1,000 non-students). Except for rape/sexual assault, average annual rates were lower for students than for non-students for each type of violent crime measured…..

Rates of rape/sexual assault for the two groups did not differ statistically.

Between 1995 and 2002 rates of both overall and serious violence declined for college students and non-students. The violent crime rate for college students declined 54% (41 versus 88 per 1,000) and for non-students declined 45% (102 versus 56 per 1,000).

Among the “characteristics of violent victimizations of college students” Baum and Klaus reported that “93% of crimes occurred off campus, of which 72% occurred at night”. (“Violent Victimization of College Students, 1995-2002”)

The McMaster Students Union (MSU) is also very much involved in the safety and security of McMaster students. The Students Walk Home Attendant Team (SWHAT) will walk students home from campus provided they live within 30 minutes of the university. The Emergency First Response Team (EFRT) responds to any medical emergency on campus within a few minutes. These well-trained student volunteers are dispatched through University Security Services in response to dialing 88 on any campus phone.

Information on all student services is available from the Student Affairs website: http://studentaffairs.mcmaster.ca/. Information of particular interest to parents is available from that page at: http://studentaffairs.mcmaster.ca/parents/. The Director of Security at McMaster is Terry Sullivan and Security’s web page is: http://www.mcmaster.ca/security/about.htm .

We are trying to make McMaster as safe and secure as possible while also trying to maintain the openness and freedoms that we are proud of. The onus is on all of us to do our part and watch out for one another.