The Student Association is doing what they should be—trying to help the students—through its latest proposal of having student police patrols. But the idea is handcuffed before it can get rolling because there simply is not enough crime to justify the patrols.

SA member Sharat Shenoy proposed that student police patrols roam the campus late at night and on weekends to protect students from any violent crime that might occur. The patrol is supposed to be the eyes and ears of the University Police.

Shenoy proposed the idea after talking with security officials at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. Champaign-Urbana has a population of 172,700. DeKalb has a population of 33,100.

Granted, crime is nothing to take lightly and it exists anywhere there are people, but the amount of crime in DeKalb cannot be compared to the crime in a city with a population three times its size.

UP Capt. James Webster said students tried to form a similar saftey organization a couple years ago but because little crime and general boredom on the students’ part, the patrols lasted two nights.

Webster said campus crime has not increased at night since that time. The worse thing that could happen is “your sensibilities would get hurt by someone draining their bladder into somebody’s bushes,” he said.

The SA is doing the right thing by thinking of visible ways to help the students. But the campus crime rate is not enough to demand the patrols’ existence.