Students, faculty voice concerns at Gate Forum

CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Lee Ann Hodges

Junior Bill Kennedy and Mary Gerardy, Assistant Vice President for student life, discuss the use of gates on campus, Wednesday night in Benson 401.

Three members of the Gate Committee held an open hearing Wednesday night in Benson 401 to address the problem of campus safety.

Mary Gerardy, the assistant vice president for student life and the chairwoman of the committee, led the discussion.

She said that the name "gate committee" was a misnomer, because the committee was to investigate multiple security options, although President Thomas K. Hearn Jr. seemed partial to the idea of gates when he created the committee.

Campus security has been a topic of discussion prior to this year, but interest has been much greater in the months since the abduction of two female students last spring from a parking lot near Collins Residence Hall, Gerardy said.

There is also renewed concern about security because of the abundance of IBM Thinkpad computers that will be on campus next year as part of the Plan for the Class of 2000, she said.

Gerardy and others said they believe that outsiders to the university community who would commit on-campus crimes may see the university as a "fat, rich plum ready for the picking."

She said that the committee has not yet reached any conclusions and that it will be some time before it gives recommendations to the administration.

The Gate Committee has visited other schools, including Duke University, the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a few other smaller schools, Gerardy said.

These schools have been unable to implement gates due to traffic flow through their campus. However, other schools like Rice University have installed gates on campus.

If gates were to be installed at the university, they would probably be placed at the Reynolda and Polo Road entrances, as well as the entrance from University Parkway. Of these, the Polo Road entrance has the most nighttime use, Gerardy said.

The addition of security gates to campus would raise additional issues, such as the hours they would be manned by guards and the form of the gates used -- guard posts or welcome gates, Gerardy said.

The committee is considering options other than gates. Alternatives include more roaming officers, personal alarms like beepers that can alert Campus Police to the location of the person wearing it, a more central location for campus police and more lighting, Gerardy said.

Bill Kennedy, a junior and one of two student representatives on the committee, said that some students fear these gates may be turned into sobriety checkpoints, and that many students do not see the need for gates.

He said most students view them as an unnecessary hassle.

Harold Titus, an associate professor of art and a faculty representative of the committee, offered one reason for the administration's safety concerns.

"President Hearn and other administrators are so concerned because they are the ones who have to call parents if something goes wrong," Titus said.

Gates are not the faculty's preferred solution to the security problems, since the gates are more symbolic of security than effective, Titus said.