While restricted DukeCard access to dormitories and new locks and lighting in Perkins Library have shown that administrators are eager to alleviate on-campus safety concerns, the University has adopted a more limited role in ensuring the safety of its off-campus residents.
Currently, students have the responsibility of learning about and implementing their own safety precautions off campus. The University has facilitated the process by providing crime statistics and warnings, but has mostly allowed Durham to steer neighborhood safety efforts.
"When students get to college, they tend not to take safety precautions in the same way as at home," said John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations. "At the end of the day, the best we can do is give students decent information so they can make informed and rational choices."
Susan Kauffman, special assistant to Burness, said the reported rape of a student at a residence near East Campus earlier this month prompted the University to create an off-campus student e-mail list. The University can now send information about off-campus concerns directly to students. In addition, students can access neighborhood crime statistics provided by the Partners Against Crime program in District II of the Durham Police Department. Whether the available information is being utilized, however, is a different issue.
"I might look into a neighborhood and decide it doesn't look very safe and that I'm not going to move there," Burness said. "There is some evidence that students don't make those kinds of judgments. They want to live near campus, so they don't do their homework to find out where there is more or less crime."
Lindsay Derman, a senior living off East Campus, said she considered safety when choosing an off-campus residence, but that cost was her primary concern. She also noted that she is not familiar with her neighbors.
"You're still part of the Duke bubble; it's just that you're off campus in the bubble," Derman said. "We have very little contact with people who aren't from Duke."
Assistant Director of Walltown Neighborhood Ministries Sylvia Hayes said the bubble mentality often prevents student-neighbor collaboration against crime. Until last year, Hayes lived in Walltown, an NPI target neighborhood just a few blocks off East Campus.
Alex Niejelow, a junior, agreed that students should assume a central role in their own protection, but he said the University has not performed up to its potential in creating a safe off-campus environment. Niejelow, who spearheaded Duke Student Government's safety initiatives last year, said the University has lagged in areas of strategic planning, especially in regard to properties surrounding East Campus. Specifically, he cited the lot on Markham Avenue and Broad Street, which was long vacant before a Dollar General opened there less than a month ago.
"If we're willing to take interest in the surrounding areas, then how could we let a pivotal corner'Äîa main entrance to East Campus'Äîsit vacant for two years and then go to a store like Dollar General?" Niejelow said. "By leaving something vacant, a criminal element can come in and take advantage of that. And there's no way someone could show me that Dollar General is going to bring up property value or is going to support the clientele surrounding the Duke community."
In alluding to the economic factors behind his denouncement of Dollar General, Niejelow tapped one of the factors that Director of Community Affairs Michael Palmer said was crucial to cultivating a safe living environment'Äîthat is, the general stability of the surrounding neighborhoods.
"One of the things that helps stabilize neighborhoods is home ownership," said Palmer, whose office runs the Neighborhood Partnership Initiative, a program that has renovated and sold dozens of homes to first-time homeowners. "Since we began offering homes with zero percent mortgages, the neighborhoods we work with are actually neighborhoods that are on the mend."
Hayes agreed, saying crime rates have dropped since property values started going up.
Duke has also encouraged faculty and staff to take up residence in Trinity Heights, a development off East Campus. Niejelow lauded the program for connecting to Duke and making the area seem less foreign to students.
Addressing Niejelow's assertion that Dollar General will not improve the financial situations of the neighborhoods around East Campus, Palmer, Burness and Hayes said the store did not pose a threat to the stability of the surrounding communities.
"You have to realize the type of people that live in this community aren't rich people," Hayes said. "A lot of them don't have cars, and they really like having Dollar General right there in walking distance." Hayes added'Äîand many students agreed'Äîthat the store may also appeal to thrifty college students.
In response to the claim that Duke invited a criminal element into the neighborhood by allowing the lot to sit vacant for so long, Palmer said it is not University policy to embroil itself in community matters unless the community specifically requests such an action.
"If you understand the politics of Durham, you'd know that you'd get blown out of the water if you went in with an initiative that said, 'We're going to come in here and fix your problems,'" Palmer said. "There's a lot of pride in these neighborhoods."
Although Duke has taken a relatively passive stance regarding off-campus safety, Durham has taken several initiatives to increase security in neighborhoods such as Walltown, including improving lighting and cutting down vision-impairing trees. Also, for the past several years, PAC II and the Self-Help Credit Union have encouraged police officers to move into the neighborhood under a program similar to the University's NPI.
One officer bought a home in Walltown under the program in May 2001, another independently in May 2002. Although the first officer is no longer serving with the police force, there is a third officer currently considering home ownership under the PAC II program, a Self-Help official said.
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