Today’s Staff Editorial
Let’s be honest: Prospective students are often deterred from attending this university because College Park is widely considered an unsafe place. Our city’s reputation is awful when it comes to crime — when it’s a positive sign there were only 362 thefts, two aggravated assaults, 46 burglaries and 28 motor vehicle thefts in 2012, you know there’s a serious problem. University President Wallace Loh has continually emphasized his desire to revitalize the city and make College Park a top-20 college town — for that to happen, eliminating crime has to be a No. 1 priority.
The effects of these crimes aren’t just detrimental to student safety and the university — they also affect the city’s attractiveness to prospective residents. People aren’t just dissuaded from living in College Park because of rowdy students; they want to feel safe in their homes, which seems like a faraway dream given a recent string of armed robberies. It’s high time we change this perception so we can live up to the city’s label: “A Livable Community.”
In the past two weeks, there have been five reported armed robberies. While Prince George’s County Police determined one incident was fabricated, that hardly eases our concerns. Sure, there has been a decrease in on-campus crime this year, which University Police attributed to its efforts to implement patrol sectors and an increased use of technology and university-wide alerts.
But the past two weeks’ crimes have occurred dangerously close to the campus where students often walk. And one was on the campus.
While some students are quick to blame police, these crimes highlight a much larger problem: a lack of necessary funding from the state for safety initiatives. For the second year in a row, University Police received a nearly $31,000 grant to funnel toward new technology and enforcement. But this simply isn’t enough, as the campus and city clearly need an increased police presence, which means there is a need for more money to pay officers working additional hours.
This year looks like the most promising for the state, financially speaking, as Gov. Martin O’Malley released a proposed $37.3 billion state budget that, for the first time in his two terms, does not require drastic spending cuts or tax hikes to remain balanced. O’Malley has even proposed a 7.5 percent increase in state funds to the University System of Maryland, which seems to indicate there would be enough money to designate additional funds for safety initiatives.
Although it’s still unclear what the state’s prospects are for the budget — the U.S. Congress has delayed negotiating a national budget deal until May, when debates surrounding the debt ceiling will almost certainly resurface — it seems the state has dodged the worst of the downtrodden economy. Even if Maryland is faced with a more constrained budget than anticipated, funneling money toward safety initiatives needs to remain a priority. One of College Park’s worst qualities is its level of crime — and even if police say crime rates are perceived as higher than they actually are, that doesn’t change the fact that prospective students and residents are still hesitant to move here.
Rather than granting university or Prince George’s County police tens of thousands of dollars to crack down on underage drinking, state officials should focus on making the most of limited resources by addressing the most pressing problems. Right now, we’d rather be able to feel safe walking across or close to the campus than to know students under 21 aren’t getting drunk in bars.
