Crime enters academe groves

Press, 12 May 1987, Page 17

Crime enters academe groves

By

JOHN TOWNSLEY,

’, of the Australian Associated

Press

Australian campuses have not turned into fortresses yet, but there has been a steady increase in on-campus security, both to meet a growing crime rate and to calm student fears. Most Australian universities acknowledge the problem but refuse to reveal the exact extent. Some now have 24-hour patrols, night-escort services between libraries and halls of residence, free bus services to cut through the darkness and extensive lighting systems. Sydney University, in the heart of a high crime area including Redfern and Glebe, shows the pattern of things to come. It has a security staff of 43, rosters 20 people to conduct night patrols throughout the campus, and sends out security cars with revolving lights to patrol the area.

Geoff Dove, the university’s security director, says the system, had to be completely revamped

following the 1977 murder of a former female student She was found strangled on the campus one Saturday morning. Sydney has developed a reporting system in recent years that gives the security service an accurate breakdown of crime on campus.

Most of it has spread from surrounding crime areas. The campus is experiencing up to 1000 reported crimes a year, mainly involving property. Universities also have been the scene of armed holdups and bank robberies.

The University of New South Wales at Randwick, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, now operates what it calls a “lighted corridor

patrol.” This covers 40 hectares,, and was introduced three years ago when street lighting was installed along the main campus streets.

The Australian National University in Canberra has been forced to improve its lighting following a vicious rape two years ago in which a girl was assaulted at knife-point and her boyfriend beaten up. A University spokesperson says the couple were brought on to the dark and quiet campus at knife-point Sodium lighting has been placed across its vast 120 hectares, including areas of bushland and trees.

In Melbourne, La Trobe and Monash Universities have bus

services between libraries, halls of residence, and the nearest public transport Melbourne University has just introduced a nightly escort service for women students between Balllieu Library and the main campus gates, a distance of about 400 metres. A guard escorts female students every half hour between 7.30 p.m. and 10.00 p.m. Geoff Dove doubts that Australian universities will ever need, armed police forces permanently, established on campus, a step taken in some parts of America. But security is now a part of . university life; services are there to protect the universities, rather than act as law enforcement officers. Mr Dove says there is still a residual feeling in universities that security is intrusive, and publicity about what happens on campus is no business of the public.