A recent series of incidents on and around the Old Dominion University campus has left many students and faculty alarmed and questioning the school’s safety. However, regional and campus crime statistics indicate that their fears are misplaced, and that ODU compares well with other similar campuses.
     Several attention-grabbing crimes, including the assault of an ODU professor outside BAL and the stabbing of a student on 42nd Street, have prompted some on campus to examine their own behaviors, and whether or not they are putting themselves at risk.
     “A lot of professors make sure that they always leave with someone at night,” said Marialuisa Alfaro, who teaches Spanish at ODU and Tidewater Community College. “Some just will not leave unless they’re with someone.”
     Alfaro said the university is doing a pretty good job of providing security, and she felt reasonably safe when on campus. However, she did see some safety hazards that she would like the school to address.
     “We need more lights,” she said. “The area behind Webb Center where all of the bushes are, you really can’t see anything. If someone was hiding back there, you’d never be able to see him.”
     Keyona White, a student at ODU, recently felt the effects of campus crime first hand. She said roughly two weeks ago, she and her boyfriend were held at gunpoint in a parking lot adjacent to 49th Street, close to the dorms. Returning from a trip to Miller Mart, they had just parked when an individual White described as young and “covered-up” pulled a gun on them. He demanded money from the pair, which White initially refused to give up.
     “We just kept telling him we didn’t have anything,” she said. “Eventually, I ended up throwing a couple of ones at him, and he ran away.”
     She said the incident left her feeling less safe on campus, and while she thought that the school is doing a good job, she questioned how effective ODU’s security efforts really are.
     “You always see ODU police around, but they never seem to be there when anything really happens,” she said.
     White wasn’t sure about the exact date of the incident. ODU’s incident update lists an “off-campus robbery” as having taken place on April 3.
     ODU Police Chief William F. Quinn said that as a whole, ODU is a safe campus, and the administration has been very supportive of efforts to increase campus safety. However, he said that no matter what the school does to bolster security, the increasingly residential nature of the Norfolk campus would continue to pose difficulties.
     “People are staying on campus more,” he said. “Unfortunately, everybody doesn’t always get along, and that can result in some unfortunate activities.”
     In spite of the recent spate of headline-grabbing incidents, Quinn said the ODU Police were doing “real well,” especially when taking into account the thousands of new students living on and around campus.
     In regard to the assault of the professor near BAL, he said that the incident appeared to be random, with no clear motive. The professor, described by Quinn as someone who had been “teaching at ODU for a long time,” was leaving the building when a man in his mid-to-late teens struck her in the face. He and another young man then fled the scene. Nothing was stolen from the professor during the incident. There were witnesses present at the time of the assault who corroborated the story.

     “They struck her in the face, and that was it,” Quinn said. He said the ODU police department put a few extra officers out on patrol for the next few nights, but that they didn’t see the incident as part of any larger pattern.
     As reported by The Mace & Crown, the recent stabbing on 42nd Street was the result of an altercation between two students who had been drinking heavily. Norfolk Police officer Sgt. Jim Robertson said the two were fraternity brothers who had gotten into an argument over a girlfriend. The victim was required to stay in a local hospital overnight due to excessive bleeding.
     According to ODU campus police statistics, there was only one incident of aggravated assault on campus in 2006. This follows two incidents in 2005 and none in 2004. The school reported no arrests made for illegal weapons possession in 2006, one in 2005 and two in 2004. However, the university listed five disciplinary actions/judicial referrals for on-campus weapons possessions in 2006, two in 2005 and two in 2004.
     The university reported two cases of robbery and five cases of burglary in 2006. Statistics were not currently available for 2007. Virginia law mandates only that a school report official campus crime statistics by October of the following year.
     A study entitled “Crime on Virginia College and University Campuses,” co-authored by ODU professor Dr. Dennis Gregory, found that crime rates at Virginia’s public universities were significantly lower than those of the state and of the nation as a whole. For instance, according to the study, there were 5.5 murders per 100,000 people in the United States in 2004, while there were only .25 murders per 100,000 students on campus. Similarly, there were 291.1 cases per 100,000 of aggravated assault in the general population, compared to 21.22 among students on campus. The same pattern was shown across the board for numerous crimes.
     “College campuses tend to be much safer than the communities surrounding them,” said Gregory. “The difficulty you run into with a campus like [ODU] is that it’s so open and in an urban area, which can make certain things difficult to control.”
     When compared to other urban campuses, such as Virginia Commonwealth University and North Carolina State University, he thought that ODU ranked “right at the top” in terms of safety. He said while ODU’s increasingly residential nature might drive up crimes such as burglary, he didn’t think that it would have much effect on violent crime.

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