Graduate students are criticizing a local construction project that will reroute traffic around the Graduate Hills Apartment complex to deter crime in the area, maintaining they were largely kept in the dark on specifics.
The project, which will ultimately close off an exit to the graduate housing complex at the intersection of Tulane Drive and University Boulevard, began yesterday and has residents bemoaning the construction’s inconvenience and questioning the effectiveness of such a measure to actually decrease crime rates.
Graduate Student Government President Anna Bedford said she was told about the project’s concept but was only informed last Thursday that it would begin yesterday — even though she said she requested graduate students be kept in the loop several times.
Bedford added that just three days earlier, she had inquired about the plans and was told they were “not yet solidified,” and she would be contacted as soon as they were.
“I asked where the residents and graduate students were in these considerations,” Bedford said. “Current residents are most aware of the crime and safety issues at the apartments right now, and they were not invited to participate in the process.”
Although Dennis Passarella George, the assistant director for university housing partnerships, did not have numbers of crime incidence in the area, he said the concept of altering the entrances to Graduate Hills originated from a 2005 police crime analysis. Police highlighted the housing area as a potential hotbed for crime because it offers criminals a quick getaway from the campus to Langley Park and Silver Spring, he said.
“We’re not moving ahead with this in reaction to any specific crime but to prevent crimes by tightening safety,” George said. “It will increase the safety now and for future residents.”
According to Passarella George, the road reworking decreases the inconvenience to residents while deterring anyone from entering or exiting from University Boulevard. Officials only signed with a contractor and finalized plans last week, George said, noting his first concern was to get information about the changes to residents and then the GSG.
But Andy Black, a graduate student and resident of Graduate Hills, said he was not consulted on the project.
“I feel ignored, overlooked and generally not considered,” he said. “We’re graduate students; we’re active and intelligent members of the university community, and this decision was made by people who seemed not to even think about the many ways that it would affect us.”
Black also doubted the effectiveness of the construction in preventing crime.
“There are two other exits that criminals could leave through, and from what I understand, the general feeling is that most of the crime in the area is related to foot traffic,” Black said. “So no I’m not confident that this will reduce crime.”
But Passarella George said other measures have been made since 2005 to increase safety around the housing complex, including trimming trees, increasing lighting and installing cameras and blue-light phones.
farrell at umdbk dot com
