Halfway into the fall semester, many Seton Hill University (SHU) students are complaining of problems with vandalism and violence in the residence halls.
�Somebody got shot with an Airsoft gun and whatever followed, somebody got two of their teeth bashed out,� said Mark Clark, a freshman, who is no longer a resident of Havey Hall.
�With the students this year in the freshman residence halls…95 percent of the students are great students; it’s five percent that want to be destructive,� said Keisha Jimmerson, assistant director of residence life.
By Megan Ritter,
Staff Writer
Halfway into the fall semester, many Seton Hill University (SHU) students are complaining of problems with vandalism and violence in the residence halls.
�Somebody got shot with an Airsoft gun and whatever followed, somebody got two of their teeth bashed out,� said Mark Clark, a freshman, who is no longer a resident of Havey Hall.
�With the students this year in the freshman residence halls…95 percent of the students are great students; it’s five percent that want to be destructive,� said Keisha Jimmerson, assistant director of residence life.
Clark, and other Havey residents – who wished to speak off the record – described how some students, in Clark’s words, �don’treally understand how community living works.�
They tell stories of residents who rip open the building’s electronically-locked main doors, keep the building awake long past quiet hours, leave their garbage and waste food in the hallways, urinate in the stairwells, and pull assorted messy or hazardous pranks.
Campus police records include four false fire alarms in the month of September.
Many are also troubled by the recent presence of Airsoft guns in the residence halls. The guns, which shoot small plastic or metal pellets, can be purchased for as little as $20 from retailers such as Wal-Mart. SHU campus police searched the residence hall and confiscated all the guns that they found following an incident wherein a laptop computer screen was damaged by an Airsoft gunshot.
The SHU administration keeps an eye on problems in the residence halls. Charmaine Strong, dean of residence life, personally reads communication reports submitted by the Residence Life staff discussing day-to-day problems in the halls. She has toured Havey Hall and meets regularly with her junior staff members.
�You expect some of it, with new students – the energy, the excitement. Some of it, I think, happens by mistake…I think personally things have settled down,� said Strong of damages to the residence halls.
Traditionally, rule-breakers and vandals have been fined, but, �Fines don’talways work…because usually mommy and daddy are paying the bill,� said Jimmerson, and Residence Life has begun experimenting with what they term �creative sanctioning.�
Last January, Residence Life began the P.R.I.D.E. program, which offers prize drawings as rewards for buildings that can remain damage-free for a sustained amount of time. More recently, the second floor of Havey Hall woke at six on a Saturday morning to clean the building’s lounge as a sanction for damages sustained in the building. Strong also mentioned SHU’s recent push to improve student spaces as one more way to keep damages to a minimum.
�If you have junk, the mentality is that there’s no incentive to take care of it…Hopefully it’s easier to take care of it (student spaces) because it’s nice to begin with,� said Strong.
The P.R.I.D.E. program has been a success at other campuses. Robin Anke, director of residence life, implemented the program after seeing a favorable write-up of the program in a trade journal.
Jimmerson said that it generally takes up to two years for such a program to show significant results. In the future, Strong says that an all-campus forum has been suggested, where students could share their complaints and suggestions to the administration.
Jill Lindblad, graduate resident director for Havey Hall, believes that building a relationship between the students and the custodial staff would go far toward controlling problems in the residence halls.
�I don’tthink that the students really realize that the messes they make are someone else’s work,� said Lindblad.
Clark, meanwhile, would like to see a stronger presence from the resident assistants and campus police in the residence halls. �Just being around at night…as soon as something is heard, even if no one comes to complain, just coming out to see what’s going on [would help],� said Clark.
�If they continued to admit students based on academic and curricular requirements, they would have the quality of students that well-represent the school. However, there are numerous students attending for non-academic reasons, and their…habits simply don’tmesh with those of the students that are here for academic purposes,� said Clark.
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