Admin. seek solutions to safety problems

SAFETY from page 3 SAFETY from page 3considering the price of tuition, room and board at the University. And, she added, considering this is the second such incident in little over a year, there should be better spot checks. Clery also questioned why the University does not have a stricter system of checking on guards and requiring them to meet the demands of their jobs. "Are they waiting for some horrendous murder or victimization to happen?" she said. University Interim President Claire Fagin said last night that certain inappropriate behaviors by security guards can merit an overhaul of the system. "I would think that a crime does not have to happen. There are behaviors that can be sufficient to say enough is enough," she said. Fagin, who called the incidents "grotesque," said University Police officers are going to patrol residences on a short-term basis to monitor the guards. She added that there will be a relatively rapid effort to change the structure of security on campus. "We're asking the police to do the monitoring and that's never been done before," she said. Simeone said police have done spot checks in the past and she welcomes the initiative. "The police have always done spot checks and have always been welcome in our buildings to make sure the security services have been functioning well," she said. "I'm pleased to see they're upgrading this." She also said that the implementation of University Police checks will supplement Residential Living's spot check system, under which there have still been problems with the security guards. University Police Commissioner John Kuprevich said police officers started their spot checks during the midnight shift this morning. "We started this evening on the midnight shift to have police officers on their patrol sectors make random and frequent checks of all residential areas," he said. Kuprevich added that University Police is bringing in an extra officer dedicated to checking the residential units in every patrol sector. The long-term solution may not lie in simply changing security companies, though, Kuprevich said. "We should take a look at how we do the security in the front end of our residential units, as opposed to changing over to another company," he said. The solution, he said, might be "to get whichever company is most capable of having people there to do the job and simply to continuously check these people to make sure they're alert." McCoullum said she is calling for an immediate change in the way that the security system is currently conducted to eliminate the inherent structural problems. "We have a fundamental structural problem in campus safety and security," McCoullum said. "This to me is an unfortunate validation of my call for a fundamental change." McCoullum said problems of safety and security are historical problems at the University. She is currently advocating that the University hire one agent for institutional security, as opposed to an outside agency. "All I can do is the best I can do in this term to make concrete changes, and I am going to do that," she added. "Regardless of the history, that's what I've committed to." Among the possible solutions to structural security problems, McCoullum said, is the reassignment of residential safety and security operations to another University office that has the singular responsibility for all safety and security on campus. Kuprevich said McGinn's "run-of-the-mill" security has a definite impact on University Police's ability to secure campus. "I think their effectiveness certainly has an impact on our ability to make a safe campus," he said. Kuprevich said there has to be an enhanced level of coordination between security services and University Police. "We're trying to develop an overall plan which will integrate security, security technology and the operations of the campus police department," he said.