About eight years ago, CSUN’s community witnessed a shooting around the dorms at a graduation party that had police and security forces revaluate their plans on dorm security.
A community police program was implemented under CSUN Police Chief Anne Glavin when she stepped into her role to help prevent incidents like this from happening again.
‘We saw a 34 percent decrease in crime around the dorms after we started the community police,’ said Glavin.
Capt. Scott Vanscoy pointed out CSUN closed specific gates to the dorms and checked IDs of students from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. to make sure only the residents living in the buildings can enter the dorms.
Certain CSUN students like the fact that the dorms close some gates after 7 p.m. for security precautions.
‘I think its good (that security) start checking IDs and closes certain gates at 7 p.m. because it avoids trespassers from entering the dorms,’ said Diana Torres, freshman.
Some CSUN students don’t agree with all of the security procedures they have to go through to get back into the dorms.
‘It’s a pain that the certain gates in the dorms close,’ said Jacob Bratton, freshman English major. ‘Its such a hassle to walk around to the other doors and gates.’
Other California state schools such as CSU Long Beach (CSULB) don’t have any specific times where it starts checking school ID’s but do enforce quiet hours.
‘We don’t have a specific curfew, but we have quiet hours starting 7 p.m. from Monday to Thursday,’ said Mo Springer, assistant at CSULB Housing and Residential Services.
Springer also said guests are allowed to visit or spend the night as long as they sign in with an Resident Advisor and are the same sex of the student they are visiting.
Some California universities such as the University of California Los Angeles have similar standards when it comes to security checks at its dorms.
‘After 10 p.m. we would have students show us their Bruin cards which we’d swipe through a machine to see if they live in this dorm or not,’ said Asad Panjwani, economics major and resident assistant at UCLA.
There are dorms for first year students and resident suites located on campus for upper division students, Panjwani said, which are treated like apartment buildings giving students more freedom and a sense of living on their own under the right security measures.
‘As an RA, I never saw any major incident amongst residents, but we’d get an occasional call about a scuffle going on somewhere in the building and if the situation wasn’t controllable then we’d notify campus security, but nothing major,’ said Panjwani.’ ‘Overall though, the dorms and apartment suites are safe.’
CSUN students like Bratton feel they’re being monitored as adults and thinks it is ridiculous that they have to pay a fine if their friend stays over past 1 a.m.
‘Everytime someone comes by after 7 p.m. they have to sign in and get a wrist band and return it to the front desk by 1 a.m.,’ said Bratton, English major. ‘Its even worse that we have to pay some sort of fine if our friends stay past 1 a.m.’
The fine for staying out past 1 a.m. is $35.
Torres agrees with her fellow schoolmate.
‘Sometimes you want your friends over to chill and hang out, but they have to leave by 1 a.m.’ She said.
According to the recent Crime Awareness and Campus Security Report, crime in the residential community has gone down from a 115 incidents to 93 incident most recently reported.
