Student behavioral violations on-par with last year for first week

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.