It Could Happen to You

When Harvard students engage in their favorite pastime of Yale bashing, they never lack ammunition. And while the Elis make valiant but futile attempts to defend their alma mater, one thing even they acknowledge is that Harvard is safer than its younger, poorer sister.

The horror stories coming out of New Haven in the last few years are well-documented. One day it's a murder. The next day, a student comes home to find his apartment robbed and his dog's head cut off.

Thankfully, Harvard has been able to avoid any such high-profile disasters so far. But this is probably due more to Cambridge's relative safety and New Haven's status as one of the most dangerous cities in America than anything else.

In fact, Harvard has also been extraordinarily lucky in avoiding violent crimes. As a result, there is the general perception, held by many, that safety is not a serious issue and that students are not at risk. While this may be true in general, it is naivete at its worst to assume that the University is immune from such crimes.

As any Harvard student knows, the campus is safe during the day and early evening. As night approaches, it becomes unadvisable to walk alone to the Quad, but the area around the river houses remains relatively safe.

It is at night, particularly late at night when no one is around, that the main campus area is most dangerous. The University claims that there are security phones and police patrols, but they do woefully little to make people more comfortable.

A friend was walking past the back gate of Quincy House on Mill Street, at around 3 a.m., and believed she was being followed. When she looked around, but no emergency phone. As it turned out, she ran and was fine. But it's disturbing to know that in the middle of the campus, when someone was in danger, no help was to be found.

A walk to the Quad late at night is acknowledged by everyone to be dangerous, and as a result there are shuttles, Safety Walk and the escort service. A walk to the suburban houses of Dunster and Mather, while potentially quite dangerous, receives relatively little attention.

As residents of the two houses are well aware, there is no really safe way to access the houses, located almost as close to crime-ridden Central Square as to gentrified Harvard Square. A student who makes the journey has two choices: a walk down an unlit residential street or a walk along Memorial Drive and the river. Neither is safe.

Students who continue to walk down DeWolfe Street are forced to walk to a deserted corner abutting the river. Most instead choose to walk on Grant Street, which leads to a bike path behind Leverett House. Here, as many students realize, is a disaster waiting to happen.

Grant Street really is outside of the campus. It is a small street with poor lighting, many hiding places for a would-be assailant and and no emergency phone. In addition, the bike path is lit, so that while the path itself has good visibility, the area around it is shadowed so as to facilitate lurking.

Knowing all this, and given a nation-wide increase in crime, it would seem that security would be at the forefront of everyone's worries.

Is the University concerned? Apparently not.

The security guards hired by the University, according to the police department, are on duty until 1 a.m. on week nights. On weekends, one guard is kept on all night to cover two houses.

It seems absurd that security guards are kept on duty for the safer early evenings and are not present later when the greatest danger exists. A guard on duty at sunset would not seem to be as important as one in the middle of the night.

Late at night, having an actual human being in the vicinity is much more comforting than a telephone and more likely to discourage potential criminals from operating in the area. The mere knowledge that there were guards in the houses all night would not only make the students returning home feel more comfortable, but would also insure that potentially dangerous people did not sneak into the houses.

And as some 20 DeWolfe residents can attest to, security guards do matter. DeWolfe is widely considered the most dangerous undergraduate housing at Harvard because it lacks a security guard. Last week, when returning to their sixth floor room late one night, two students found a drunk homeless man sleeping in the hallway. He had been able to get in because the electronically-operated doors close and open slowly, and there was to guard to watch the entrance.

If Harvard's reaction was to expand the guard unit there would not be so much concern. Amazingly, Harvard appears to be the only place in the country cutting back on security. The security force, which has recently been reduced by 10 percent through attrition, is now believed to be considering cuts that would reduce the department by another 15 percent.

This trend towards cutting back on security is also mirrored in the police department itself. Though administrators claim that police patrols at night are effective, that is true only in a very limited sense. A car driving by is not in an area long enough to really stop a security threat.

To patrol the campus effectively, police foot patrols are necessary. Such patrols would insure that there would always be a police officer around to actually help out and be at the scene as something happened.

In addition, the police bases should be decentralized, so that all the officers do not have to go back to 29 Garden Street. The location of a headquarters closer to campus would ensure greater coverage and supervision that is now lacking.

Right now changes are reportedly being considered which would curtail overtime hours for police. Under such a plan, if an officer called in sick, a replacement would not be called and another officer would be given double the area to patrol.

Budget cutting is a fine thing, but it also revels where a corporation's priorities lie. While organizations like Safety-Walk are admirable, the administration must take security more seriously to prevent a tragedy from occuring.

At this point, however, it appears that the only way the University will be convinced that there is a major problem is for a high-profile murder or rape to occur which scares parents of potenial students.

Until then, what can a student do? Well, not much, except to hope that you're not the victim who finally makes Harvard wake up.