Strict partying policy

SALISBURY, N.C. -- You can't smoke in a dorm at Catawba College anymore.\nIf you're a student under 21 and you get caught drinking, the dean calls your parents. No exceptions.\nAnd if you're a visitor causing trouble on campus, you're banned, reported to police and arrested for trespassing if you come back.\nThose are the rules -- and they're being enforced.\nNo one can say if that will help the private, liberal arts college 40 miles northeast of Charlotte, N.C., bounce back from last year's three tragedies -- a fire and two shootings -- that left four students dead.\nIt's difficult to determine their effect on enrollment. Freshmen applications were down for classes that began Aug. 22: from 1,093 to 1,000. But with a larger percentage of returning students and more adult students, total enrollment looks as though it will be higher than ever at about 1,550.\nStill, the college's new president, new dean of students and new director of public safety are working together to help Catawba recover.\nTheir plan is this: to grab college life by the scruff of the neck and send it off to rehab.\n"These events, because of their effects on the students, have opened the door to a serious look at what is fairly typical behavior," said Robert Knott, Catawba's new president. "The college has a way now to work with students to help improve their lives. This creates an opportunity to talk about, to think about, drinking behavior."\nOfficials said alcohol or drugs were involved -- to some degree -- in each of the incidents at the school, affiliated with the United Church of Christ.\nSophomore Andrew Grooms died from severe burns he received trying to escape a dorm fire at Catawba last October. An autopsy found a small amount of alcohol in his blood.\nIn January, star linebacker Darris Morris was killed in a shoot-out outside a Catawba dormitory. Six students from nearby Livingstone College have been charged with his murder and are awaiting trial. Students involved had been drinking, police said. And marijuana and crack cocaine were confiscated from a car driven by the Livingstone students.\nAnd in April, two 19-year-old freshmen were shot in the head and killed, off campus, in what police said was a drug-related crime. A small amount of marijuana was found in the apartment where the incident occurred and witnesses told police drugs were involved.\nThat's why the school is emphasizing its alcohol and drug policy this year, leaving notes on the beds of all incoming freshmen to remind them of the rules.\nAnd freshmen were required to attend an alcohol and substance abuse talk on how drinking interferes with learning and life.\nIn addition, the school is installing a $500,000 system that will automatically alert the Salisbury fire department and campus security officers of any smoke or fire on campus.\nBut the most significant changes may be in two new campus administrators, Sylvia Chillcott and Roy Baker.\nPresident Knott asked Chillcott, who served as Catawba's director of security from 1986 to 1994, to return this year as director of public safety. After everything that happened last year, friends asked if she was crazy when she took the job.\nShe's already making changes, such as improving lighting on campus and ordering shrubbery, which could hide criminals, trimmed.\nAnd she wants all 10 of the school's security officers to mingle with students, to have lunch in the cafeteria with them.\n"We want the students to know they've got someone they can turn to," Chillcott said. "It's not about us, it's about them."\nBaker, the new dean of students, feels the same way.\n"My goal is to create a sense of community on this campus where people feel like they matter," he said. "It's not just about rule enforcement."\nKnott recruited Baker from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, where administrators credit him with turning around a fraternity system Baker says was out of control.\nThe philosophy Baker is bringing to Catawba follows the basic principles of child rearing: tell students what the rules are, explain the consequences, then follow through every time.\n"We're going to enforce the law," Baker said, "and if you don't like the law, you need to become an activist, go to Raleigh and change it."\nHis words sound harsher than they are. Baker will tell you he's not against drinking, he likes students and he wants them to have a good time.\nHe's already created parties on campus that begin at 11 p.m. and go until 3 in the morning, surprising his staff with the work hours.\nAnd students love him.\n"He has a lot of really neat ideas," said Michelle Kowalsky, a senior and president of Catawba's student body. "And he's on the same page as us.\n"I have a good feeling that everything's going to be a whole lot better this year. I don't know how it could be any worse."\nSalisbury police commend the changes at Catawba. Parents do too.\nFrom her first meeting at Catawba, Diane Risley said she was impressed with how up front administrators and faculty were about what happened.\n"We can't put our kids in glass bubbles," said Risley, whose daughter, Laura, is a freshman this year. "Those things can happen anywhere."\nCatawba just had some bad luck, Chillcott said.\n"But that doesn't mean it's the end of Catawba.\n"We're going to heal. And we're going to come back bigger and better.\n"It's not about forgetting," she said, "it's about how we will grow from this experience"