Vandalization and damage of school property are becoming a concern for Seton Hill University (SHU), but the greater concern for many in the SHU community is, who pays for this?
According to Mike Dell, chief of campus police, if they catch the person responsible, that person will be reprimanded and must pay for the damages. If the individual responsible is not found, then every student pays for the damages through their tuition.
�Any damages done in dorms the students pay for. And any damage done anywhere else the university pays for unless the person is caught,� said Bill Vokes, head of maintenance.
By Kristy Schweikarth,
Staff Writer
Vandalization and damage of school property are becoming a concern for Seton Hill University (SHU), but the greater concern for many in the SHU community is, who pays for this?
According to Mike Dell, chief of campus police, if they catch the person responsible, that person will be reprimanded and must pay for the damages. If the individual responsible is not found, then every student pays for the damages through their tuition.
�Any damages done in dorms the students pay for. And any damage done anywhere else the university pays for unless the person is caught,� said Bill Vokes, head of maintenance.
Vokes also said that any damages done are, on average, repaired within two days of it being reported.
Dealing strictly with residence hall life, Kiesha Jimmerson, assistant director of residence life, discussed examples of situations that would be cause for the overall fine.
If someone would vomit in the laundry room of Farrell Hall, and no one admits whom the individual is, everyone on that floor would pay for the clean up.
Jimmerson and others in charge of residence life have surveyed other schools and universities to see if there is a different way of taking care of costs, and they found two ways of dealing with the issue.
A majority of bigger schools and universities add a damages fee onto tuition costs of approximately $200 per year, while the smaller schools and universities follow the same procedures as SHU.
This year, there are new tactics in place to punish offenders and prevent future vandalizations called, �creative sanctions� that Jimmerson and the others in charge of residence life have come up with.
Creative sanctioning is new this year and is used in residence halls to try and steer individuals away from damaging property. Using the previous example of someone throwing up in the laundry room, instead of making the violator pay, he or she is made to do five service hours in Farrell.
This, along with the PRIDE program, a reward system that was introduced last year for the residence hall that is the cleanest and has gone the longest without damages, was implemented to reduce the amount of vandalization and damages done to school property.
However, statistics found that there was an increase from last fall 2006 with 12 reported acts of vandalization to 31 reported acts in fall 2007.
Jimmerson admits that it is a jump in reported acts of damage, but these statistics also include individuals who have been caught, which has increased.
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