In an effort to eliminate crime at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst — which ABC News Primetime called the nation’s most violent school in November 2005 — District Judge Nancy Dusek-Gomez appeared in the campus newspaper during the first week of the school’s fall semester, warning students about the consequences of criminal action.
UMass Police Department Deputy Chief Patrick Archibald said Dusek-Gomez’s decision to buy a full-page ad in the Daily Collegian, the independent student newspaper at UMass, was a “proactive move by the court which we applaud,” adding these types of “educational efforts have always been successful, [but] it’s too early to tell if [the ad] will be effective.”
However, Archibald said he strongly disagrees with the characterization of the state university as the nation’s most dangerous.
“I do not think [UMass-Amherst] deserves the reputation it has gotten,” he said. “I have worked on this campus for 20 years and I know it to be a safe campus.”
Archibald and spokesman Patrick Callahan said the university has taken large strides in lessening the crime rate. According to the two men, UMass has increased dorm security, enforced card access into dorms and added additional student receptionists and police cadets in correspondence with measures taken by the UMass Police Department.
In addition to hiring more police officers, UMPD has installed cameras throughout the campus, stepped up dorm patrol and increased the number of dogs in their K-9 unit to three.
Due in large part to these actions, the crime rate at UMass has consistently declined in each year since 2003. But Archibald said the 2005 Primetime episode cited the university’s more violent data from 2002 and 2003, casting a skewed light on the university.
He added that, this year, there have been no violent crimes, adding that UMass-Amherst has an average of 12 sexual assaults a year and a “share of assaults and batteries with dangerous weapons.”
He said a surprising crime on the rise at the university is “sex for hire.
“There were 12 arrests [for solicitation of prostitutes] over the course of last year,” he said. “People outside of the university are using the Internet to solicit students.”
Archibald noted that last week a Connecticut man was arrested for offering students $150 to perform oral sex.
He estimates that the UMPD generally make between 25 to 40 arrests each weekend. In contrast, according to Sgt. William Fogerty of the Boston Police Department, there have only been 35 to 40 alcohol related arrests in the entire Allston-Brighton area during the first three weeks of the school year.
Fogerty said the most common crimes are usually committed by students under the influence of alcohol and include public urination, causing a nuisance and underage possession. Archibald pointed to vandalism as the number one problem at UMass.
“[Students] go to college and try to out Animal House,” Fogerty said. “Most arrests and calls are for parties or fist fights. Occasionally we find kids in the gutter aspirating in their own vomit. There’s sexual assault and assault with weapons.”
Fogerty said the problem of alcohol abuse and belligerence begins much earlier than college, and placed a large part of the blame on alcohol companies.
“Liquor companies contribute a lot to the problem,” he said. “Do you ever see a fat, bald old guy like me in these commercials?
“They spend $9 billion a year to glorify drinking,” he added.
Fogerty said he hopes the problems are better addressed at home before students arrive at school, adding that along with a large police force, the best way to curb rampant alcohol related crimes is to instill “harsher punishments [and to] crack down harder and send kids to jail longer.”