As students filled Northwestern’s campus during Wildcat Welcome, University Police and Evanston Police worked day and night to ensure the campus and city remained secure – and to make students aware of their role maintaining it.
Off-campus students said they noticed a marked increase in the off-campus police presence during Wildcat Welcome.
“I saw cops constantly from about 7 o’clock until the early hours of the morning,” said School of Education and Social Policy senior Danny Weinberg, who lives at the corner of Maple Avenueand Gaffield Place. “It was weird seeing so many cops patrolling that neighborhood.”
The Northwestern University Police Department focused on educating freshmen and transfer students on campus safety, said Dan McAleer, University Police assistant chief.
“We tried to talk to people about how best to protect themselves and their belongings while they’re here at Northwestern,” he said.
McAleer added that NUPD officers helped direct traffic during move-in last Tuesday. The campus police also provided security at a number of Wildcat Welcome events, such as Rock the Beach Party and Seth Meyers’ stand-up show, McAleer said.
“It’s always a busy week for university police,” he said.
While the Evanston Police Department also spoke to students about crime prevention last week, they concentrated on speaking to returning students who live off campus, said Richard Eddington, Evanston’s chief of police.
But while crime prevention is a “key issue” that students living off campus must be familiar with to ensure their safety, the EPD also aimed to improve relations between these students and the Evanston residents they live with, Eddington said.
“Students living off campus constantly interact with the other residents of Evanston,” he said. “It takes some adjustment on both the neighborhood’s part and the students’ parts so they can live together peacefully.”
In recent years, complaints from Evanston residents about the off-campus students have increased, so EPD officers focused more on this issue during Wildcat Welcome. In combined efforts between the UP and EPD, officers spoke one-on-one to off-campus residents about the police’s expectations for the year.
So far, students living off campus have been “extremely cooperative,” Eddington said.
Still, the EPD handled some “wild parties” over the weekend and issued tickets for underage drinking.
“There are always some incidents where there may be too much alcohol and things get a little rowdy,” Eddington said. “But that’s far and away the exception and not the norm in our interactions with the student body.”
Back on campus, new students also have shown appreciation for the campus police’s efforts, McAleer said.
“I think our programs inspired people to look out for their (personal) safety and the safety of their belongings,” McAleer said. “And we try to do the same for them.”
Rebecca Hartley, a McCormick freshman living in Allison Hall, said that seeing police around campus made her feel safer.
411 on 911: Campus Safety, one of the Essential NU programs freshmen were required to attend, was particularly effective for informing students about safety issues, she said.
“Actually living on campus will give me that sense of knowing what’s going on even more,” Hartley said.
On the other hand, Medill junior Madeleine Wright said she thought the police could do more to make the NU campus safer.
“I pretty much see the police in places where it’s convenient to get a car around,” she said. “I don’t see a lot of police walking around on foot near the dorms. That would make me feel much safer.”
