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hen fire erupted at an off-campus apartment building earlier this year, a team from ECU arrived on the scene not long after the Greenville fire trucks. As smoke poured from the second-floor balcony, Dr. Lynn Roeder, ECU’s interim dean of students, comforted the evacuated students, some cradling dogs in their arms, as they shivered in the winter chill. “We checked to see if they were OK, then made sure no one was feeling a sense of trauma,” says Roeder. “Once we knew they were OK, we wanted to make sure that if a student couldn’t get back into the building, they had somewhere to stay.” Roeder ordered pizza and hot chocolate and began making arrangements for the displaced students. “They already had a sense of loss, and we wanted to make sure no one was going to have to sleep in their car, and that their pets were also taken care of,” she says. “At a time like that, students can’t always think about what the next step should be.”

These days, keeping students safe—even if they live off campus—is an integral part of university life. While ECU has largely escaped the tragedies that have hit other universities, campus leaders want to make sure students have a strong safety net. They’re reaching beyond campus boundaries with innovative prevention programs and an expanded role for campus police.

“Parents have expectations of universities, and so do students,” says Dr. Marilyn Sheerer, vice chancellor in the Division of Student Life. “Many times parents will ask me, ‘How safe is your campus?’ or ‘How safe is your downtown—and what are you doing to make sure these areas are safe?’ Parents and students want to know what we are doing, because safety can affect everything.”

To strengthen safety on and around campus, the university has increased spending by $1 million this year, part of a special focus by Chancellor Steve Ballard. That emphasis comes partially in response to violent, often fatal incidents at other campuses but also reflects an ongoing concern at East Carolina that college life today is different than a generation ago. Today’s students are susceptible to traditional risks like date rape but also to new crimes like identity theft.

With this new funding, campus leaders are enhancing computers, cameras and communications. A full evaluation of campus lighting is under way, and a new campus safety committee is examining the most important issues for staff and faculty.

Well before the two murders at UNC Wilmington two years ago and the massacre at Virginia Tech in April, East Carolina was working to heighten student safety by enhancing patrols and boosting cooperation with the Greenville Police Department. Students, too, are being called on to take greater responsibility for their own safety. Moreover, plans are ahead to equip all dorms with fire sprinklers, at an estimated cost of nearly $11 million.

“There’s no way the police department can be responsible for all kinds of safety,” says Michelle Lieberman, director of the Center for Off-Campus and Community Living and co-chair of the university’s safety committee. Lieberman, who is East Carolina’s point person to coordinate safety goals, has made national presentations on programs her office is managing. She also is leading a series of Neighborhood Coalition meetings.

“Safety isn’t just police, it’s everyone,” she says. “You have to be proactive.” “It is important to remember that no one is immune to violence or disaster,” Ballard said after the Virginia Tech tragedy. “But it is equally important to know that we constantly train, study and prepare for the unexpected.”


Campus as community

Think of towns the size of Statesville, New Bern or Sanford. Their populations are about the same as the nearly 26,000 ECU students, faculty and staff who live and work on campus. All those people are jammed into some relatively small spaces—the 521 acres on Main Campus, 206 acres at the medical school and 650 acres at the West Research Campus. In some ways that geographic concentration makes police work easier.

One big downside of policing the campus is the sheer inventory of buildings requiring constant security. There are 155 buildings alone on Main Campus—dorms, office and classroom buildings. Most are full of valuable equipment, such as the 2,325 computers available for students to use. Each building on campus is assigned a police officer who checks it twice during a shift. Dorms are locked at all times.

The campus is protected by 131 security cameras, more than 65 “blue light” phones for emergency calls and more than 100 alarms and “panic buttons.” The ECU Police Department’s control room is a nerve center of multiple computer screens surrounding the dispatcher.

Lieberman says statistics bear out that ECU is a safe campus. There have been no murders on campus in the school’s history. The last incident involving a gun occurred in 1989 and ended without any injuries. There was an accidental discharge of a gun at a dance on campus without anyone being hurt.

Still, officials concede that some concerns over student safety remain. One concern is rape. Five were reported last year, four of which were committed by acquaintances of the victims.

Whether an assailant is known or unknown, rape is a violent crime, says ECU Police Maj. Frank Knight. None of the reported rapes last year included compounding injuries. The acquaintance rapes occurred either in the assailant’s dorm room or in the female student’s room. All but one involved alcohol.

The university offers self-defense classes that teach specific strategies for avoiding acquaintance rape. Knight says the campus police department plans to carefully analyze the number and type of rapes occurring this year to gauge trends. Any increase would bring more focus on the problem, he said.

But Lieberman emphasized that what happens on campus is only part of the picture, because more than 70 percent of students don’t live there. Most live in large-scale apartment complexes scattered around Greenville.

Lieberman says there have been marked reductions in crime in the nearby community where many students and faculty live. Stepped-up patrols over the winter holidays, typically the worst times for burglaries because most students leave town, made a dramatic difference this year, as did greater cooperation between the ECU and Greenville police forces. Lieberman’s office distributed flyers to students living in these off-campus neighborhoods offering tips to prevent break-ins and thefts. City police ramped up their efforts and used undercover officers, foot patrols and intensive monitoring of the hot areas.

As a result, last Christmas season saw no burglaries at the homes of students living off campus, compared to more than 100 the year before.

Her office also has worked closely with Greenville Police and the City Council to encourage cooperation in other areas, such as enforcing rental guidelines, underage drinking restrictions and parking in the nearby communities.

“It takes a community effort,” Lieberman says. “We want to create an atmosphere of caring, because this community is our neighborhood.”


Partners with police

Creating a sense of community also brings a changing role for campus police officers. While officers’ primary responsibility is to enforce the law, these days campus cops are emphasizing prevention and relationship-building more than ever. While officers are assigned to a dorm and make regular checks each shift, they also conduct safety programs and get to know students, hoping to help them learn to protect themselves and their belongings.

“A lot of our programs are designed to make people aware,” says ECU Chief of Police Robert Stroud, who recently left this position. “Our officers make crime prevention presentations and talk about how to stay safe, for instance, if you’re going to a club.

“Security is not just the police department’s responsibility, it’s everyone working together,” he says. “We try to get information out, so people will be more aware and take precautions, even steps that are as simple as locking your door when you leave your residence hall. We also encourage people that if something doesn’t look right, give us a call.”

The campus police department has focused more resources on improving the training of its officers, an effort that bore fruit when it received a stamp of approval this spring from the national Commission for Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. East Carolina is one of only four UNC system campuses to attain the certification, along with UNC Chapel Hill, N.C. State and N.C. A&T. The Greenville Police Department also is certified by the commission. “It makes for a more professional agency,” Stroud says.

An extraordinary degree of cooperation between ECU and Greenville police has been good for town and gown. When a rash of robberies in a downtown parking lot caused problems, both forces joined to solve them, Stroud says. Similarly, an armed robbery attempt close to campus was spotted by ECU police, who radioed Greenville police, who made an arrest and confiscated a gun.

A mutual aid agreement between the two agencies means that from midnight to 4 a.m., both ECU and Greenville police are patrolling the area. What’s more, ECU police have enlarged their patrol area to now include a greater off-campus area. This kind of flexibility has decreased the potential for crimes near campus, Stroud says.

In addition, part of the university’s new funding this year will purchase a Viper communications system, estimated to cost about $400,000, allowing officers from ECU to reach Greenville Police without going through an operator or dispatcher. Officials say that kind of immediate communication is critical during a crisis.

Greenville police have made student safety a priority, too. When Greenville Police Chief William J. Anderson assumed his job last year he initiated “Impact Teams” for the university community that helped reduce burglaries and assaults.

“Naturally, student safety is of major importance to our community,” Anderson says. “We have a lot of students who participate in downtown activities, and there were some problems in the past, so we put a high priority on safety citywide, but particularly in the downtown and the university area.”

What’s more, Anderson says, his force and campus leaders soon will take a hard look at alcohol use and abuse, the issue many consider the underlying cause of most crime. In March, the Greenville City Council approved the Greenville-ECU Task Force to Study Student-Related Alcohol Issues.


Strangers not the problem

As in society at large, it’s often the people we know who are most threatening. Domestic abuse and relationship violence, along with date rape, are continued concerns for female students.

“Stranger rapes are very rare on campus, but we do see two to three sexual assaults on campus a year by an acquaintance,” Stroud says. “We encourage students to report them, and we have services to help.” Victims advocate and counseling services are available to women who experience sexual assault. The Student Health Center on campus can conduct examinations and gather evidence without requiring women to travel to a hospital.

SafeRide, a student shuttle service, can help students avoid unsafe situations, says Capt. Mike Perry, who heads the ECU Police Campus Safety Division and also co-chairs the safety committee. The vans take students, staff members or faculty from any place on campus to their homes.

“If you need a ride, we’re going to give it to you,” Perry says.

Peter Romary, ECU’s director of student legal services, expects the university will institute more broad, aggressive approaches to combat crime involving students. In January, Romary played a key role in a daylong higher education safety symposium at ECU, which featured speaker Steven Healy, chief of police at Princeton University and president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. Romary has conducted safety training for the entire UNC system, as well as for the Department of Public Instruction. He is a member of the National Crime Victims Bar Association.

“We have to look at our own campus, to see what the problems are here. We can’t just look at what we read in the newspapers,” Romary says. For instance, he says alcohol abuse is a major problem across the nation on college campuses, and ECU is no exception. U.S. Department of Justice statistics indicate that 90 percent of all college crime is related to alcohol use. In the spring, ECU Police began riding campus buses at night to help quell some recent alcohol-related rowdiness.

Other hot-button issues include reckless driving—a problem that he says is often ignored. Moreover, stalking and date rape are “silent epidemics” on any college campus. “We need to identify the major issues that our students face, whether it’s interpersonal safety, such as assaults, relationship violence or sexual assault, or whether it’s Internet safety,” he says. “We have to focus on arising issues.”

At the dean of students office, Roeder knows students need guidance through their hard times. That support can help keep them safe and able to continue their studies, no matter what comes their way—whether it’s a fire or a car accident. “We want to take care of our own, to educate them and make sure they have the services they need,” she says. “A lot of what this office does is to deal with crisis, and I want to be wherever I can to reassure the students.”