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• “As far as our students being the victims of violent crime on the South Campus, it’s actually less than last year.”

  Gerald Schoenle,

  Chief, University Police

By KEVIN FRYLING

Published: September 18, 2008

Despite two recent incidents of sexual assault—and the resulting attention from the local news media—there has been less violent crime on the South Campus this semester compared to the same point in the fall 2007 semester, University Police Chief Gerald Schoenle told the Faculty Senate Executive Committee yesterday.

“As far as our students being the victims of violent crime on the South Campus, it’s actually less than last year,” he said. “Several [more] of our students had been victims of violent crime in the areas surrounding South Campus by this time last year.”

But he also said that the two sexual assaults reported earlier this semester—the first involving a female UB student who was standing outside her dorm room early in the morning on Aug. 31, the second involving a woman who was not a UB student as she cut across the south lawn near Hayes Hall on Sept. 6—are all the more troubling because they don’t fit the typical profile of a college sexual assault.

“When I talk to new students and parents at orientation, usually I say that we’re worried about sexual assaults by date rape—those happen on every college campus in the country—but that we don’t really have an issue of violent crime on our campuses where people are jumping out of bushes,” said Schoenle. “But, as you all have read, that’s exactly what we just had happen.”

Schoenle went on to outline safety measures being implemented on the South Campus to deter future crime, including the installation of a new lighting system, state-of-the-art emergency telephones and security cameras. University police increased patrols on the South Campus last year, he said, plus Buffalo police have added two more cruisers to their beat in the University Heights neighborhood.

Linda Steeg, clinical instructor in the School of Nursing, said the assaults have caused great concern among her female nursing students, many of whom walk across the South Campus to catch the bus after evening classes. She also urged officials to reach out, not only to students, but also to faculty and staff about such safety measures as the late-night shuttle service that’s operated by the Anti-Rape Task Force.

In other business, representatives of the UB Honors College appeared before the FSEC to update senators on the status of the college. Major changes since its recent switch from an honors program to an honors college include the expansion of the program from a two-year experience to a four-year one. The expanded program includes not only an honors seminar course, but also a choice of six other honors “experiences,” among them an honors thesis, internship, upper-level courses and studying abroad.

Clyde “Kip” Herreid, academic director of the Honors College and SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, said that the Honors College has been promised $100,000 by an anonymous donor to establish an “honors lounge.” The gift is contingent upon the lounge being established by July 2009—a proposition complicated by the ongoing master planning process.

“We hope that this problem will be resolved,” said Herreid. “If the cash is not used by July 1, 2009, it’s been promised to another college.”