Colleges Respond to Rise in On-Campus Crime

During the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, college campuses across the country were faced with increasing criminal activity. The infractions, which ranged from robbery and property destruction to fighting and sexual assault, generated concern among students, parents and college administrators alike. At some colleges, crime problems were accompanied by heavy partying, underage drinking and illegal drug use among the student body. Those problems eventually garnered substantial media attention, and school administrators brainstormed ways of bolstering the security of college campuses.

A range of solutions was proposed, with some more successful than others. For example, some administrators suggested that planting additional trees and bushes in and around college property would make campuses look nicer, and thus make such areas less prone to criminal activity. However, such approaches were highly ineffective in combating crime, and schools eventually resorted to more aggressive crime-fighting measures.

Several schools--such as the University of Maine at Orono, the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho, and Eastern Washington University in Cheney--began orchestrating campus police patrols. Those colleges allowed security personnel to monitor students' activity in public spaces around campus and, in some cases, permitted police to roam freely through residence halls. While the effectiveness of such patrols was not well documented, the presence of police did not cause substantial problems with students at those respective schools.

Beginning in 2005, Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman adopted an aggressive new security policy meant to combat criminal activity and partying around campus and inside dorms. The university's campus police force hired several new officers and began dispatching them on patrols. Soon thereafter, concerned students began complaining about the behavior of some of the force's officers, accusing them of eavesdropping on private conversations inside students' dorm rooms from adjacent hallways and collecting incriminating evidence against students without a warrant.

Eventually, the WSU force apprehended two students under suspicion that they had engaged in criminal activity: One dorm resident was charged for possessing cocaine, while another was accused of property theft, a felony charge. After the cases went to court, controversy gripped the WSU campus as community members debated the legality of the charges. Should officers have been able to conduct the type of random search that resulted in the student arrests? Would evidence collected from a dormitory hallway be admissible in court?

Observers of the cases acknowledged the difficulty of those questions, noting that the incidents pitted the civil liberties of the student body against WSU's ambitions to create a safe, secure campus. "The police and the university are in a tough position," remarked David Brody, director of the criminal justice program at WSU-Spokane. "Students do have privacy rights, but the university has duties that butt up against those."

As the trial unfolded, it became clear that the officer who had arrested both students had been aggressive in his patrolling tactics. Court documents showed that he had randomly loitered outside of students' rooms for some time before taking decisive action.

In the drug case, the officer had been randomly walking down a hallway when he smelled marijuana in the vicinity. Though he had not been in the area with probable cause, he noted the room number from which the smell was emitting and left the building to secure a warrant from the campus police department. He later returned to charge a female student inside the room with possession of cocaine, which was found in her purse. Lawyers representing the student argued that the arresting officer's actions had violated the student's Fourth Amendment rights, alleging that the initial search and subsequent seizure of the drugs had been unjustified.

In the burglary case, the officer had been asked to investigate an alleged robbery that took place on a specified floor of a dormitory building. However, the officer instead began eavesdropping on residents located on another floor. After overhearing a conversation between students inside a private dormitory room that the officer decided was criminal in nature, he apprehended one of the individuals in the room because of his suspicion that the student was involved in the burglary.

As the WSU community awaited verdicts in the two cases, legal analysts examined possible federal precedent for the dorm arrests. Existing federal court decisions seemed to define dormitory hallways--where the initial evidence in the WSU cases was collected--as public spaces. Therefore, analysts reasoned that the arresting officer would have been within his rights to patrol the hallways at random and monitor students' behavior.

In May 2006, the Washington State judge ruling over both cases diverged from federal precedent and dismissed both sets of charges. He called the arrests unconstitutional, explaining that the presence of the WSU officer on the dorm floors where he collected evidence was not initially justified because he had no warrant. The judge added that since students had a right to privacy inside their dormitories, police could not eavesdrop at random on the premises.

The decision took the Washington state legal community by surprise, and the WSU campus police force immediately suspended its patrols. Students joined civil libertarians in celebrating the victory. However, for other schools, similar trouble was just beginning.

Around the time that the WSU cases were thrown out, administrators at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) were debating various ways to bolster the safety of students and the surrounding community on its Amherst campus. Over the years, the university had gained a national reputation as a hard-partying school, where underage drinking was endemic. More recently, the school had acquired an even less desirable reputation as a criminal haven due to on-campus violence.

In the autumn of 2003, roughly 1,000 UMass students had rioted in the aftermath of a Major League Baseball playoff game. Students destroyed vehicles and other private property, set fires and physically assaulted police officers responding to the incident. The riots--and the ensuing media coverage of the event--tarnished the university's public image. School officials later expressed determination to restore integrity to the reputation of UMass.

In 2006, the UMass Police Department instituted a slew of new security measures to crack down on unruly student behavior. Some 325 video surveillance cameras were placed in and around dormitory entrances to catch students engaging in suspicious behavior. A handful of police K-9 units armed with drug-sniffing dogs began conducting regular campus patrols. And, at the start of the Fall 2006 semester, security began patrolling the hallways of student resident halls as well.

The dorm patrols immediately emerged as the most controversial of the measures taken by the school's police force, even though officers were not allowed to enter a student's room unless they had a warrant. Students launched petition drives and held protests in order to strengthen public opposition to the patrols. As the semester continued, the rate of student arrests increased noticeably from the previous year. While some students were arrested because of property theft, others were taken into police custody due to drug use or excessive drinking.

Police personnel defended their role in making the arrests. They maintained that officers were generally present in residential buildings on campus only when they had been summoned by a concerned dorm resident. However, they added, if officers happened to notice suspicious activity inside the dorm that was unrelated to the original incident for which they were summoned, they would be justified in addressing that activity as well as making arrests as necessary.

But many students were incredulous that the university would allow campus police to act so aggressively in monitoring students' actions. "It's like a police state," complained Justin Sawyer, a concerned UMass student who helped organized protests. He added that campus security personnel "are creating a culture of fear and paranoia." Observers say the drama being played out at UMass has focused the national debate over the legal and ethical legitimacy of dorm patrols.

Sources

Bradley, Doug. "University of Wisconsin Recommends Policy Affirming Resident Assistant Rights, Responsibilities." University of Wisconsin System News, March 1, 2006, www.wisconsin.edu.

Powell, Bonnie. "Life in the Fishbowl." University of California at Berkeley News, March 3, 2003, www.berkeley.edu.

Rusconi, Peg. "UMass Students Protest Police Patrols in Dorms." CBS4 Boston, December 12, 2006, cbs4boston.com.