No on-campus burglaries reported over holiday break

Jennifer Curington

This holiday break is now the second in three years that no on-campus burglaries have been reported.

Chief Mike Russell, director of public safety, said the lack of burglaries is because students are gone and public safety has more time to take active preventative measures.

“We’re able to put one-hundred percent of our effort into checking doors and physically go door to door on residents’ halls and buildings on campus and make sure that everything is secure,” Russell said.

While they are on these walks, they find many dorm rooms unlocked and will lock the rooms up to prevent theft, Russell said.

“We find a good many open doors and we lock them and secure them, but we were able to target and look at things like if screens are messed with or been removed or anything like that. So we’re able to really be out and about,” Russell said.

During the break, burglaries are more likely to happen through windows because students are not coming and going through the dorm entrances with their Eagle IDs and allowing others to follow them in. That’s why police encourage sticks being placed in first floor dorm windows to prevent them from being opened.

In 2012, two burglaries were reported over the break. Both were incidents of composite photos being taken from fraternity houses, one being Alpha Tau Omega and the other was Sigma Nu. No on-campus burglaries were reported during the 2011 holiday break.