Improving communications between NIU students and the DeKalb Police Department is the goal of a new liaison program between university groups and DeKalb Police Detective Bill Feithen.

The NIU Community Relations Program is set to start this week and involves about six NIU organizations, including fraternities and minority groups, Feithen said.

“At this time we are concentrating on fraternities and minority groups simply because we feel they represent a large number of students,” he said.

A description of the program states that it is designed to reduce barriers, address the needs of citizens and establish cooperative relations in order to solve mutual problems and concerns that might arise in the community.

“We feel that good relations already exist (between the police and students). We are trying to take something good and make it better for the mutual benefit of the students and the university,” Feithen said.

He said the program will address individual problems a member of an organization might have and also will address concerns of the organization as a whole. Specifically, the program wants to inform students about noise, liquor and parking violations, Feithen said.

“We want to inform students about existing laws in DeKalb that we do enforce—which might not be strongly enforced in their (home) communities,” Feithen said. “We hope that one result would be that less arrests are made.”

Delta Sigma Phi President James Klimas said his fraternity will be involved in the program because it will be beneficial for the fraternity members and for the community.

“A lot of people look negatively toward the DeKalb police. They think they are biased against students,” Klimas said. He said the program might be helpful to decrease some of the negative attitudes some students have toward the police.

Klimas said one of the issues the Delta Sigs are concerned with is fighting among fraternities in the Greek Row area. He said the fraternity is interested in decreasing the occurrence of fights.

Although the program currently involves only certain organizations on campus, it might be expanded, depending on its success and the time commitment involved, Feithen said.

Feithen said the program will cost the city about $8,000.

Jon Dalton, NIU vice president for student affairs, said, “I think this (liaison program) is a very good idea because it will provide a communications link between the city, the DeKalb police and the university.”