Indiana Wesleyan University’s on-campus crime rate last year was lower than previous years.
Kyle Beal, Chief of Campus Police, said, “I take a year’s worth of stats and put that in a document that gets sent out by October 1 every year.”
The document, which is an annual security report, outlines statistics of specific crimes on IWU’s campus and informs students, faculty, and families about what campus police do to prevent these crimes. The report showed a decrease in many crimes, with hardly any major reported incidents.
“Obviously, I’d like to think it’s all of what campus police has done, but I’m not naïve,” Beal said, “I know it takes a combination of what we do along with what student conduct and the student development team do, residence life and all those individuals do to make a change.”
This year’s document showed a significant decrease in crimes on campus, though the number was low already, according to Mark DeMichael, the Vice President of Student Development and Athletics.
“When you have a very safe campus, even one or two things can kind of drive those statistics up because it’s a little number to begin with,” DeMichael said.
One problem that was outlined in the report were a handful of thefts. Items were stolen from vehicles in student parking lots.
“We had a bunch of vehicles broken into last year, but nothing was ever damaged,” Beal said, “They were kind of opportunities, because people left their cars unlocked.”
DeMichael explained that the amount of thefts decreased once students were made aware that they should keep their vehicles and dorm rooms locked at all times. The overall crime rate was positively affected afterward.
“I think that’s played a part, and our students are being smarter about making good decisions to keep themselves and their things safe,” DeMichael said.
Arielle Luzadder, an IWU student, said she has mixed feelings about her safety on campus.
“Not so much at night, just because people can get on campus that aren’t the greatest of people,” Luzadder said, “…and there aren’t as many students out and about on campus at night.”
Beal encourages students to take advantage of the university’s resources, such as Safe Ride to keep them safe. He also encourages them to communicate with campus police as soon as an incident arises.
“We’re here to help make this campus as safe as possible, and without knowledge of what’s happening, we can’t do that,” Beal said, “We can’t do our job as efficiently as we’d like to if we don’t know what’s going on.”
“We try to put the pieces in place so that if students feel unsafe or they’re uncertain about what the right thing to do is, you have the right resources there, whether it’s the Center for Student Success, campus police, Res Life, all of the staffs in those places are here,” DeMichael said.
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