UCLA Housing’s attitude on break-ins unacceptable
By Editorial Board
Dec. 5, 2010 11:53 p.m.
Heather Chow woke to a bright light shining through her first-floor window. She dialed 9-1-1, and when she heard a bang on her window, she pressed the call button. Then she ran.
No student should have to suffer through any sequence of events like this, ever. No excuses.
UCLA Housing Services and university police know that crime spikes around the holiday break every year. And while we recognize UCPD can’t be everywhere at once, continuing to allow crime to occur simply is not acceptable from either group.
Housing merits particular scrutiny in this case, for if Housing were more proactive in protecting its student residents, UCPD would not need to be everywhere at once.
Housing Services’ wooden dowels are a perfect example of this half-hearted attempt to prevent break-ins. Housing gives students small pieces of wood in a cost-effective if insufficient effort to block their windows from being forced open. Chow’s window was secured by a dowel before it was busted. A lot of good that did.
When it comes to student safety, this board believes that UCLA has a responsibility to do everything in its power to protect the students it serves. We believe it disgraceful and negligent that it continually fails to fulfill such a duty.
Over this most recent Thanksgiving break, Chow’s room, as well as two rooms in Hitch Suites, were broken into through the windows. The year before, five burglaries were reported over the break, and valuable belongings were stolen.
This board fails to understand why university officials continually allow this to occur. They know when it happens, and they know where it happens: on the first floors of residence areas that don’t require building access.
Housing charges students a substantial amount of money to live on campus. It seems only logical that some of the funds are used to ensure student safety: install alarm systems, shatterproof glass windows, even security during the holiday breaks.
If Housing is going to force students out of their rooms over winter break, it must do its part to ensure that rooms are protected while students are away. Yes, students should be smart and take their valuables with them. But they shouldn’t have to.
Schools have a fundamental responsibility to act “in place of parents” and to act with a “duty of care.” And while we grant that it is difficult to look after the individual residents, there can certainly be more done to alert students about the spike in crime over the holidays.
There is precedent in the courts that tells us that a school has the duty to protect students from reasonably foreseeable assaults on campus. Similar logic could certainly apply to reasonably foreseeable burglaries.
But this is about more than students losing their Xboxes. Such material items can be replaced. Feelings of security are another matter entirely. It is the university’s responsibility to ensure that Chow is the last student to suffer through a traumatic Sunday morning.
Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the editorial board.
