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Is Duke safe?"
The caller was an alumnus who graduated in the early 1980s. His oldest child and only daughter had just been accepted to Duke. He had read about the murder of a graduate student in an off-campus apartment last January, and heard anecdotes about Durham's crime rate and gang activity. And like people everywhere—but especially parents of young adults—he'd been horrified when a gunman at Virginia Tech killed thirty-two people and injured dozens of others before committing suicide.
Is Duke safe? One could argue that in some ways, it's a lot safer than when the alumnus attended. Back then, the drinking age was eighteen, kegs flowed freely seven days a week, and campus fraternity parties were unmonitored, bacchanalian free-for-alls. Unless you had access to a car, the only way to get around campus after dark was to walk, bike, or take the East-West bus.
Dorms were never locked—scruffy followers of the Grateful Dead took showers in the bathrooms and crashed in commons areas for days at a time whenever the band played local gigs—and sexual-assault awareness and prevention programs were practically nonexistent.
On the other hand, today's binge drinking and its dangerous consequences (alcohol poisoning, subpar academic performance, risky behaviors) are endemic among college students. Instructions on how to manufacture so-called "date rape" drugs like GHB and rohypnol are easily found on the Internet. And fatal shootings on U.S. college campuses—thirty-nine dead in 2007 alone —have become a chilling reminder that a campus setting, no matter how insulated or bucolic, is not impervious to violent crime.
For parents like the anxious alumnus, the question of whether Duke—or any college campus, for that matter—is safe can't be answered with an absolute. Administrators say that it's generally safer for students to live on campus rather than off campus; that traveling alone, especially after dark, is inadvisable; and that personal responsibility —particularly among undergraduates who are more likely to test new limits, drink to excess, and exercise poor judgment—plays an essential yet often overlooked part of keeping the entire Duke community safe.
"Our mission is to have students, faculty, and staff feel comfortable going about their business, whether that's attending class, conducting research, or performing their jobs," says Kemel Dawkins, vice president for campus services. Dawkins' office oversees a dozen departments, including event management, parking and transportation, Duke Gardens, Duke Forest, and the Duke Police Department. "At the same time, Duke is a very open campus. Right now we have people coming from all over for the El Greco exhibit at the Nasher, we have events almost every weekend in the gardens, and there is renewed interest in Duke football. We want to continue to make this a welcoming and inviting place, while engaging our community on a regular basis to look out for each other and report things that don't seem right."
With approximately 15,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional school students; a work force of about 30,000 throughout the university and Duke University Health System (DUHS); and an estimated two million visitors a year, the Duke community is an amorphous and somewhat transient entity. As multiple populations engage in a range of activities—some that overlap and are complementary, others that have nothing in common—Dawkins and his colleagues employ a range of approaches to ensuring the safety and well-being of its members.
"From an institutional standpoint, we are constantly evaluating and re-evaluating safety and security concerns," says Dawkins. "Having said that, I want to make sure that our performance and people's expectations are matched. I don't want people to think that they don't have to take precautions, because they do."
Owing to Duke's porous borders and sprawling footprint—9,350 acres stretching over three counties—crime statistics reflect events that occur not just on the undergraduate campus, but in the medical center (an employee receiving harassing calls from an ex-husband, a visitor shoplifting candy from the hospital canteen), in the far reaches of Duke Forest (car break-ins at trail entrances), or at satellite parking lots (stolen catalytic converters, scratched vehicles).
"Our crime rates per population density are relatively low," says Aaron Graves, associate vice president for campus safety and security and head of the Duke University Police Department (DUPD). "There is a perception that we are here to protect the community from outside elements, but by far the majority of reported incidents we see are student-on-student theft, or employee-on-employee theft, where items are stolen or misplaced. In these incidents, the victims are part of our community, but the suspects are also part of our community. These are crimes of opportunity."
As Graves notes, the most prevalent form of reported crime occurs when items of value—laptops, iPods, book bags, wallets—are left unattended. Two locations that pop up with frequency on the police logs are Wilson Recreation Center and Brodie Gym. Even though an ample number of lockers is available, gym-goers are responsible for bringing their own locks, an extra step that many forego, instead leaving their valuables unsecured while they hit the treadmills or play a game of pickup basketball. DUPD's crime-prevention manager, David A. Williams, says that very few members of the Duke community take advantage of the department's frequently publicized free engraving service that makes it easier to identify lost or stolen property.
Graves says there are a number of ways for concerned parents and others to stay apprised of criminal activity that occurs on or near campus. DUPD distributes daily e-mail messages through an automated listserv (sign up to be added to the listserv), and posts weekly reports on its DUPD website. Duke also compiles and distributes statistics in compliance with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, a federal law that requires colleges and universities across the U.S. to provide information about crime.
Though the majority of reported crimes are relatively minor incidents, two major events accentuated the need for Duke to think more strategically about campus safety and emergency preparedness. In the spring of 2006, allegations of an off-campus rape by Duke students exploded into a racially charged, nationally followed case that has come to be known simply as "lacrosse." As the tangled mess slowly began to unravel, senior administrators identified a number of areas for improvement, including the university's internal and external lines of communication. One year later, the Virginia Tech massacre served as a grim warning that preparing for worst-case scenarios should be an ongoing imperative for any institution.
Like many universities, Duke responded to the Virginia Tech tragedy by accelerating safety improvements already in the works, and implementing a host of others. A detailed emergency-management response plan includes a communications component that spells out a chain of command for alerting members of the Duke community—students, faculty and staff members, trustees, parents, alumni, and visitors—as well as the Durham community and other local, state, and national agencies (law enforcement, media), depending on the nature of the crisis.
Over the summer, seven forty-foot-high warning sirens were installed in key locations on East, West, and Central campuses, and in proximity to the medical center. In the case of a serious emergency—an armed or dangerous person, for example, or a chemical explosion or tornado sighting—a high-decibel tone, audible for up to one-half mile, is followed by a live or recorded message explaining what is happening and what people should do. The sirens, along with emergency text and e-mail message notification, are tested on an ongoing basis. An emergency website launched in May provides timely updates, contact information and links, and options for subscribing to RSS feeds and text messaging.
Duke also hired emergency-management consultants to conduct training exercises that brought together top-level administrators from around campus to deal collectively with a simulated crisis. In one scenario, a transformer explodes on Erwin Road near the medical center, knocking out power to broad sections of campus. Another virtual crisis situation—a LifeFlight helicopter crashes into Wilson Recreation Center—
was devised by the Office of News and Communications to test communications responsiveness.
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