Current Release: September 11th, 2007 | Vol. XXIV Iss. 10

Cops make a home on campus

By betsy lane

ealane@vwc.edu

Have you ever had the feeling that Virginia Wesleyan College is kind of like a gated community? We are a private college. You show your school ID every time you come on campus after dark or if you re not in your registered vehicle. Your friends that don t go here always have to wait, show identification, and register before they re allowed to visit. Many events on campus are not open to the public. There s one road in, one road out and no public city roads. Most of us even live here. By any definition, we ve paid to make this our private place.

I think that held true until last October. A murder on campus has prompted a more active relationship with the Virginia Beach Police Department. Since that day, police officers are commonly seen on campus; especially at night. In the beginning, the police mainly manned special events and patrolled at night, helping to monitor easily breached borders that are routinely cited as a problem for campus safety and security. Now, especially if you are a resident of Village III, you re seeing them every night after dark.

Here comes the problem. What you once considered your front yard has somehow become public domain.According to the handbook, VWC is  committed to upholding the local, state, and federal laws pertaining to the use of alcohol. By most standards, they ve done a pretty good job. Just check the logs for community service hours and the amount of students that have found themselves on alcohol probation. There s always been the risk of getting in trouble with Residence Life staff while having alcohol beverages outside after a long day of classes or as part of your weekend. The school has made it against their rules.

But isn t this your home? You might have had a barbecue at your house this summer; maybe with your family, maybe with friends. If you re over twenty one, you probably didn t think twice about having a drink in your yard around your home. And chances are, the police never bothered with you. Now, even sitting outside your home, you run the risk of receiving a citation from the police for enjoying your cold one. Now you re in a public place.

I m not sure which form of punishment is worse.

Since the police have been invited onto and financed by our campus to patrol at night, our private place has suddenly become public. Think that you can t get an open container citation for drinking in a public place while you re standing outside your apartment building? Wrong. And no, it doesn t matter if you re twenty one. Think you can t get a speeding ticket on campus even though we have no public roads and our speed limit signs look nothing like those of the city? Wrong. One student did, and was even convicted.

Somehow the definition of your home, your private place, the place where people have to gain access to after dark has turned gray. As soon as the VBPD enter the campus, you re out in public again. It seems as if having a drink in a rocking chair outside your front door is no different than drinking out of a brown paper bag outside the 7-11 on Baker Road. I hope that even with the new mission of campus administrators, residence life, security staff, and the Virginia Beach Police, someone is still watching our tree-lined borders that those people don t come to our newly public place to join the outdoor party.