The Duke University Police Department has released campus crime numbers for the 2008 calendar year in its annual Clery Security Report, as required by the federal Clery Act.
The number of robberies reported decreased from seven in 2007 to two in 2008, while the number of reported aggravated assaults increased from three to six. The number of reported burglaries decreased from 65 to 51 and the number of reported motor vehicle thefts decreased from 19 to seven. The number of forcible sex offenses was five, the same as in 2007.
DUPD officials were not available to comment on the report Tuesday.
Reports of crimes committed on and immediately adjacent to Duke’s campus by or against any individual (not just students and staff) are included in the Clery Report, which institutions of higher education are required by federal law to publish each year by Oct. 1. The report excludes incidents that happen away from campus, such as the January 2008 murder of graduate student Abhijit Mahato.
Also included in the report are the number of arrests and referrals made to campus disciplinary authorities for three categories of offenses: liquor law violations, drug law violations and illegal weapon offenses. Referrals included in the report do not come only from Duke Police, but may also be made by residential staff and others.
Ten people were arrested for illegal weapons possession, down from 12 in 2007, and one person was referred to the Office of Student Conduct.
For violating alcohol laws, 320 students were referred to the Office of Student Conduct in 2008, up from 301 in 2007. Ten students were arrested, up from seven in 2007.
Sue Wasiolek, dean of students and assistant vice president for student affairs, said she was unaware of any policy changes by Duke Police or Residence Life and Housing Services that may have contributed to the increase in alcohol violations.
“My hope is that what these numbers reflect is also a wider and longer safety net, either with students calling in things or with community members making us aware of their concerns about students drinking too much or using drugs,” she said. “I don’t think you can assume that these numbers are going up because there is a different level of enforcement.”
Violations of drug laws led to 32 referrals and 20 arrests, up from seven and 17 respectively in 2007.
Those increase might have been the result of Residence Life and Housing Services standardizing some of its procedures for dealing with suspected illegal drug use, said Joe Gonzalez, associate dean for residential life.
At the start of the 2007-2008 academic year, RLHS put more emphasis on instructing residence assistants to call Duke Police if they suspected illegal drug use. Additionally, RAs were told to write and submit incident reports on all illegal drug use discovered to the Office of Judicial Affairs.
Video produced by Lawson Kurtz and Chase Olivieri/The Chronicle.
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof told a packed Page Auditorium that women’s rights is the issue of the 21st century Sept. 17. His visit to the University was the first stop on his tour to promote his new book “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.”
Unequal access to health care, food and education has crippled developing countries and left the world short of about 100 million women, Kristof said.
Telling stories of sex trafficking, physical abuse and mental neglect, Kristof illustrated his emotional and often disturbing anecdotes with photographs of the women of whom he spoke.
Kristof followed his lecture with a question and answer session and a book signing. The first 200 audience members to arrive received free copies of his book, and more were available for purchase.
As the year begins, before work piles up, Duke students have a lot of free time on their hands. Different Dukies do different things to fill the hours, most of which don’t make it on to a police blotter.
But sometimes, Duke students get drunk. And when they do, they don’t always make the best choices.
In the latest instance of drunk Duke student shenanigans, Duke Police found an intoxicated student sans clothing (yes, naked) in McClendon Commons around 9 a.m. Friday. According to the police report summary, an officer escorted the student back to his room.
Ten days earlier, Duke Police discovered a naked intoxicated student passed out near the Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences, which students know as CIEMAS, at 2:12 a.m. No word on what the student was doing over there so early on a Tuesday morning. The student was taken to the hospital.
Sometimes, however, drunk naked Dukies are a bit more active. Have a look at this police report from April:
“I witnessed two subjects running from the Kilgo Quad area towards the Bus Stop. The male subject was completely naked with the exception of his hat and holding his boxers in his hand. The female subject was wearing only underclothes. The two stated that they had been at an unknown room in Kilgo Quad playing beer pong and had lost the game and as a result had been asked to run to the bus stop naked.”
When the officer encountered the students, he “asked the male subject to please put on his boxers,” the report states. After getting the students’ information, the officer let them go and get dressed.
The two did not get off scot-free. The students were not arrested, but a Dean was advised of the incident, the report notes.
Despite the whisperings of incident reports at fraternities and Selective Living Groups across West Campus, this year’s orientation and move-in week has seen about as many write-ups as last year.
Joe Gonzalez, associate dean for residence life, said since Aug. 18 he has received approximately 15 behavioral incident reports across campus. Reports include vandalism, excessive trash and violations in alcohol and noise policies. He said most reports dealt with alcohol, noise or trash—and sometimes all three. These numbers are comparable to last year, he said, although last year’s numbers for the first week were higher than two years ago.
“In terms of behavioral reports, this is a fairly average week,” Gonzalez said. “We have seven quads on West and 14 buildings on East, so if you average that out it’s not even one per community. If you think about it in terms of communities, it’s not very high in my opinion.”
Sue Wasiolek, assistant vice president for student affairs, said a few students on campus had to be evaluated by Emergency Medical Services or transported to the emergency room, but none appeared to be serious.
Gonzalez said RLHS generally deals with incident reports that are first-time offenses, such as noise violations and alcohol policy violations. Some violations go directly to the Office of Student Conduct. When dealing with group incident reports, Gonzalez said each individual receives a report and RLHS will evaluate their history of violations and their involvement in the incident before deciding whether RLHS or the Office of Student Conduct will handle the report.
Students on campus were not the only ones cited this week. Wasiolek said there were five citations off campus—up from two last year. Three citations were by the Alcohol Law Enforcement division and two were by the Durham Police Department; the citations were for fake IDs, possession of alcohol by minors, open containers of alcohol and public urination.
Still, Wasiolek said she did not see the increase in off-campus citations as being significant or the result of more intense patrolling. The DPD and ALE patrolling methods in the Trinity Heights and Trinity Park areas were comprable to last year, she said.
Students gathered on the Chapel Quad friday night to remember the victims of the recent election violence in Tehran. To view more of Michael Naclerio’s photos, please check out a photo slideshow by following this link.
The University’s International Travel Oversight Committee, a body comprising faculty and administrators to set travel policy, voted Friday to remove Mexico from the Restricted Regions list.
Though this decision clears the path for student travel, the call did not come in time to reverse the decision to move the Duke in Mexico study abroad program, according [...]
