Crime from students attending other colleges in Syracuse is spreading across the Euclid Avenue area as more Syracuse University students opt to live on campus and in the new luxury apartments.

The Department of Public Safety has seen a significant increase of crime caused by students from Le Moyne College and Onondaga Community College living in the East neighborhood, where mostly just students from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and SU used to live.

Also, the number of students referred to judiciary offices for illegal alcohol use on campus jumped to 210 cases in 2009 from the previous year, according to the latest DPS statistics, which are mandated by law to be released Oct. 1 for all American colleges. The number of students who were arrested or had to make court appearances for using, selling or possessing drugs also jumped to 15 cases in 2009 from the year before.

In the East neighborhood, problems from OCC and Le Moyne students started to spring up two years ago, said DPS Chief Tony Callisto. 

‘It’s a reality that we have to deal with that the neighborhood is no longer just SU students and a few ESF students,’ Callisto said. 

Callisto said the rise in on-campus housing and the new Park Point and University Village apartments has attracted students away from the Euclid area. In exchange, the neighborhood has seen a rise in students from surrounding Syracuse colleges. 

Off-campus violations — having open containers, playing music too loudly or drinking underage — are evenly split between SU/ESF students and OCC/Le Moyne students, Callisto said, citing data from the last two weeks. 

That’s an increase from as recently as Sept. 18, when Syracuse police had written tickets for 21 SU students, four ESF students, 11 OCC students and two Le Moyne students since the beginning of the school year. 

DPS started a relationship with Le Moyne and OCC officials nearly two years ago to deal with the crime increase. Now, when Le Moyne or OCC students living in the East neighborhood get tickets from SPD, DPS writes a report and sends it to one of the school’s judicial affair organizations.

Harry Lewis, treasurer of the South East University Neighborhood Association, has noticed a spike in the noisiness of students walking to and from parties in front of his Lancaster Avenue home, where he has lived for 51 years. 

When he drove a friend to the airport around 5:30 a.m. last weekend, police vehicles were out among a crowd of 15 people along Lancaster Avenue.

‘The student behavior this year has gotten more raucous,’ said Lewis, whose organization advocates bringing back permanent residents to the neighborhood.

Having students from other colleges in the area deteriorate the area, because they feel they can get away with crimes when there are few permanent residents, Lewis said. 

Off-campus crime has increased, but more students were caught illegally using drugs in dorms in 2009 as well.

Fourteen students were either arrested or had to make court appearances for using, possessing or selling drugs in their residence facilities that year, according to DPS statistics. There were 15 cases total under the category, compared to only one in 2008.

DPS changed its policy in how it dealt with drug violations in 2008 after it completed a transition from a campus security organization to law enforcement agency in 2007. With the new title, DPS officers received weapons and could issue students tickets to city courts for drug and parking violations.

But there was a delay in DPS officers issuing city court tickets for drug violations, because DPS had previously just sent them to SU’s Office of Judicial Affairs. That changed when Syracuse’s District Attorney’s Office questioned why DPS wasn’t writing the tickets for city courts. 

‘It took us time to realize that we really should be doing both,’ Callisto said.

Now DPS can refer the student to the city and Judicial Affairs. 

Drugs weren’t the only area of violations that increased on campus in 2009. The number of students who violated New York state drinking laws jumped from 746 in 2008 to 956 the next calendar year. That’s shy of the violations in 2007, which surpassed 1,000.

The number of alcohol and drug violations this year is on par to match those of 2009, Callisto said. But he didn’t have any exact numbers for 2010. 

The level of violations occasionally goes up and down in waves because every class has its own unique characteristics; one may focus more on academics and the other on substance abuse of drugs or alcohol, Callisto said. Most of the alcohol and drug-related violations come from first-year students, he said. 

‘I attribute that to experimentation, first time away from home,’ Callisto said. ‘Some folks bring habits with them from high school.’

A lot of factors, such as how vigilant resident advisers are, could be causing the increase in the number of on-campus alcohol and drug violations, said Terra Peckskamp, director of the Office of Residence Life. 

‘Students could be using more,’ she said. ‘They could be using the same amount, but not hiding it as well.’ 

Resident advisers in the dorms are trained to sense the smell of marijuana, which is the most frequent drug violation they deal with, Peckskamp said. Resident advisers also often write students up for drinking in their dorms because they are being loud, she said.

Phil Dec, a sophomore marketing major, discovered that the hard way after resident advisers wrote him up twice for drinking alcohol in Sadler Hall in spring 2010.

‘At that point I was like, ‘Alright I’m screwed, I’m definitely getting written up,” Dec said.

Chelsea Salce, a sophomore early childhood education major, saw the freshmen across from her in Boland Hall get written up this year. The group was loud while they were drinking and had the door open for anyone to walk inside, Salce said.

Salce said more freshmen usually get written up because the college experience is new to them.

‘It’s so new,’ she said, ‘that they don’t know how to handle it.’

mcboren@syr.edu

Published on October 4, 2010 at 12:00 pm