UC Talks Safety with HUPD

At an Undergraduate Council meeting last night, campus safety authorities spoke about how they are trying to address student concerns about crime. UC representatives responded with questions and proposals for improving safety.

Following a string of crimes and community alerts in the first month of the semester, students have become more concerned about their security, but Harvard University Police Chief Francis D. “Bud” Riley and HUPD spokesman Steven G. Catalano downplayed fears of an extraordinary crime wave.

“There is no crime wave here,” Catalano said, adding that students have become more aware and fearful because of HUPD’s advisories, which are mandated by federal law when there is a continuing threat to public safety.

“It is our duty to tell people what’s happening,” Riley said. “We try to walk the fine line between vigilance and fear.”

Catalano stressed that while HUPD is “very concerned about violent crime,” there is a “greater risk of property crime,” which accounts for 95 per cent of crime on campus.

“What we have done is try to increase visibility,” Riley said. HUPD has sent officers on bikes up and down the corridor to the Quad and has also been working with the Cambridge Police Department. HUPD officers cannot patrol Garden Street or Cambridge Common, the location of recent robberies, because the jurisdiction for those areas belongs to the city of Cambridge. HUPD officers in those areas must be in transit, on foot or bike, Assistant Dean of the College Jay Ellison said.

Currier House UC representative George J. J. Hayward ’11 said he would like Harvard and Cambridge to work together to get a police officer stationed along Garden Street near Cambridge Common.

Officials said that improving lighting along Garden Street and in Cambridge Common is complicated by the issue of jurisdiction too, and Riley said that such additions would require the city’s cooperation.

Ellison, the chair of the Harvard College Safety Committee, cautioned that working with the city can be slow. Ellison’s committee, which brings together undergraduate and graduate students, HUPD, the city of Cambridge, and the Harvard administration, will begin meeting at the end of the month.

All three speakers emphasized that students must play a role in improving safety on campus.

Riley said students must lock their doors to prevent property crimes.

“Less than one per cent of our burglaries are forced-door, and it’s simply too easy to go around this campus and find an open door,” he said.

Ellison said that while the administration does not expect students to intervene in potentially dangerous situations, it is important that students contact HUPD immediately about crimes or intruders in dormitories.

—Staff writer Alex M. McLeese can be reached at amcleese@fas.harvard.edu.