Rachel Frainey

In the past month, students have received over six off-campus crime safety bulletins but not enough information regarding progress of investigations. This is frightening because most aren’t just petty crimes, they’re shootings. Even though the safety bulletins address these as off-campus crimes, the last time I checked the 900 block of Greenbrier Road is part of Greek Row, and the 800 block of Spiros Court is heavily occupied with NIU students.

These crimes aren’t on-campus – they’re not in the MLK Commons or outside of New Hall, but they’re crimes happening within the NIU community. The NIU administration needs to do more than just send out safety bulletins with vague information. Students need explanations as to why these crimes are happening and the NIU administration needs to be looking into it and giving students the answers they deserve.

As a student who has been here for four years, I’ve seen the crime rise here firsthand dramatically. The NIU administration needs to speak with the police – who are dealing with these crimes and gather more information on the reasons why these crimes are happening. Vague safety bulletins don’t do anything except incite fear – fear to walk around at night, fear of getting shot at on the way back from class and fear of being a student at a campus that is clearly not safe. This isn’t an off-campus issue. This is an issue happening in our community, affecting students’ sense of safety, and threatening future enrollment at NIU.

Total enrollment is down, yet freshman enrollment was up almost 3 percent this year, according to an official enrollment summary. Not only may these students not want to return to NIU after their first semester, perspective students and parents may find that while campus is safe, the crime rate of the surrounding community is not acceptable.

Maddi Smith

Because of the proximity of campus to the recent “off-campus” shootings, NIU needs to treat the incidents as though they’re happening on campus grounds, seeing as NIU students live and pass through those areas constantly.

NIU is doing a good job addressing the recent spike in crime, but they are not being transparent enough as to what is causing the “shots-fired” incidents.

While a Nov. 3 press release from the DeKalb Police Department refers to related arrests as “gang and drug related incidents,” authorities have yet to specify that the incidents are directly gang related. The closest related charge for arrestees is “mob action.”

While “mob action” is a felony in Illinois, according to the Criminal Code, it doesn’t specify gang action specifically. Instead, the meaning boils down to: two or more people knowingly committing violence toward another person or property.

If the arrests and shooting incidents are caused by gang activity, then NIU and the DeKalb Police Department need to explicitly explain this to students and issue information on how to identity and avoid gang activity.

While the NIU email and text system is a good way to inform students when crime happens, the system doesn’t offer up additional or follow-up information. Besides “avoiding the area,” there is no protocol for what to do when another shooting occurs. Not all students can avoid the affected areas.

NIU’s most recent response to an on-campus incident was to lock down all residence halls 24/7, requiring students to scan their OneCards for entry, according to a Nov. 2 Northern Star article. The university has also extended the night-time bus routes, added additional police presence and offers students the opportunity to move back into the residence halls if they’re uncomfortable in their neighborhoods, according to a Nov. 1 campus-wide email from Acting President Lisa Freeman.

Moving, however, is not a viable solution for students locked into leases. For those students currently living in the affected areas, there aren’t any practical solutions. All they can do is learn as much as possible about what’s happening and try to avoid it.

While stopping the shootings is the immediate goal of the police departments, they need explicitly explain the details of the investigation to the community in the meantime. This increase in gun violence is drastic, and the police are busy trying to keep the local NIU and DeKalb community safe; however, they aren’t being transparent enough in their explanations and are not providing practical advice as to how to identify and avoid possibly dangerous people or situations.

Maddie Steen

NIU seems to take pride in being recognized on the “Top 100 safest colleges in America” list, but when it comes to DeKalb’s safety rating, the administration’s inflated ego keeps them from getting involved in the beginning of off-campus crime and providing complete transparency.

After almost four weeks of safety bulletins, administration finally commented on how they were going to begin making efforts to increase student safety, instead of just warning us after the fact. The “Let’s Talk Safety” forum had been brought up, but it wasn’t until Dean of Students Kelly Wesener Michael sent out a “Halloween safety” letter on Oct. 27 that there was any mention of how the administration planned on protecting students.

Just because campus is deemed safe does not mean students are, and students should be this university’s number one priority no matter where they may be located. It shouldn’t take a woman being shot through her car on Halloween and shots being fired in to a group of students outside of their fraternity for this issue to get noticed by NIU. A student could have died every time shots were fired, but just because that didn’t occur the first time does not mean the shooting does not deserve undivided attention.

The administration finally thought to inform our parents on safety concerns on Thursday. With the mix of shootings, shots fired, home invasions and armed robberies, a response this late is not efficient.

If the administration wants students to believe they care about the safety of our lives, it’s going to take a lot more than ignoring the issue in hopes that it may just go away or be solved by the DeKalb Police department.

“On campus” we are safe, but as soon as students cross the street, they’re in DeKalb and the 15th “most dangerous city in Illinois,” according to 2015 crime statistics from the FBI.

It’s not acceptable to lead students into thinking NIU is a safe university to go to, yet refrain from providing off-campus crime statistics up-front with ways of how students are protected off-campus as well.