Checkmate

University officials responded quickly Monday following the tragic death of 27-year-old Syracuse student Simeon Popov, sending two e-mails to the student body in an attempt to quell concerns over on- and off-campus safety.After reading through the e-mails, there remained one question I couldn’t shake. When had the university ever made off-campus security a priority in the first place?Accounts of crime off campus have been well chronicled in the pages of this newspaper. Some lowlights include: two students being robbed on Lancaster Avenue at gunpoint, two students being robbed on Madison Avenue with a sawed-off shotgun, students being jumped on Westcott Avenue and daily occurrences of car and house break-ins.Sadly enough, the university often chose to look away at such horrible incidences of violence that didn’t occur within the campus boundaries. Even sadder, it appears to have taken a violent homicide to put off-campus security in the proper perspective.In his letter to the student body, Chancellor Kenneth A. Shaw writes that several additional safety measures are already being developed. They include campus lighting improvements (on campus), a South Campus Welcome Center (on campus), pedestrian safety measures along some of our busiest streets (too vague to discern exactly, but probably a mixture of both on and off campus) and enhanced student crime prevention education.Before Sunday night’s events, only one measure that the university was developing even looked at improving off-campus safety. Now, Shaw writes, the university should allocate funds to develop an off-campus security office and the university will shuttle students from on-campus activities to off-campus residences during the evening.It’s about time.And, one has to wonder, what took so long? The university has a responsibility to make sure all its students — both on and off campus — feel safe. An imaginary line drawn down a very real street shouldn’t allow university officials to turn and look away.Off-campus areas have been perpetually plagued by crime. Car break-ins and personal property thefts occur almost daily, while incidences of violence continue to creep up. What does the university do about it? It institutes the Neighborhood Patrol to cut down on off-campus parties. What do the Syracuse police do about it? They send undercover cops to parties, when they should be out patrolling streets that have already proven dangerous.Students that live on campus have blue lights they can hit, Public Safety officers they can call and security measures designed specifically to protect them. Yet students that live within a minute’s walk from Shaw Hall or the Schine Student Center are not afforded the same protection.Students that live off campus are part of the university community, and they should be protected as such. The majority of off-campus residents live in the Euclid area or on the other side of Marshall Street, and students make up the overwhelming majority of these neighborhoods.At their essence, these neighborhoods are university communities. Students fill the houses and apartments, interact mainly with each other and go to campus for activities and classes. But their residences also make easy targets for criminals. Those same apartments are filled with expensive possessions, and it’s common knowledge the university does little to protect those residents.Area thieves essentially have three choices: burglarize homes not owned or rented by Syracuse students (which are less likely to have as many possessions), burglarize on-campus residences (where security measures are already in place) or burglarize homes of off-campus residents (where nobody seemed, at least until Monday, to really care).The choice is simple.The university’s choice also seems a simple one. And it all comes down to money. The university funds all its buildings, dorms and apartments. The university patrols and ensures safety at all its buildings, dorms and apartments. The correlation seems simple enough. Imagine if the university owned all of Marshall Street or some of the off-campus residences. The security in these sections would double overnight.The only protection afforded to off-campus residents is by the Syracuse Police Department, a group that has up to now focused more on student partying than on legitimate criminals doesn’t exactly make me feel safe at night.But now, following a death that stemmed from a robbery, the problem is cast in an entirely different light.“In closing I want to assure you that your well-being is of the utmost concern to Syracuse University and to the Syracuse Police Department,” Shaw writes. “We will exhaust all efforts to find and bring to justice the person responsible for Sunday’s senseless act. The Police Department is maintaining a visible presence in the University neighborhood as the investigation continues.”So applaud the university for finally coming around. But let’s just hope that “visible presence” remains as long as crime remains a serious problem. Then, hopefully, the university won’t have to send out anymore Monday morning e-mails to alleviate safety concerns. And, for a change, off-campus residents may actually feel safe.

Greg Bishop is a senior newspaper and finance major. His column appears Tuesday in The Daily Orange. E-mail him at gwbishop@syr.edu.