Police, residence halls plan safety precautions for campus

Sophomore Melanie May is one of the resident assistants around campus preparing her residents for Little 500 week.

Residence halls will be enforcing extra safety precautions throughout the week to help everything run smoothly.

May said these rules are not meant to police the students, but to keep them safe.
A few of these precautions include extra RAs on duty, locking doors that are usually unlocked and making residents check in guests with the front desk.

“Little Five is a very long and well-established tradition,” she said. “Students want to participate fully, but because of that, they can get a little crazy.”

RAs have been holding meetings and sending e-mails to their residents to inform them of these temporary rules.

But students are not being informed of everything.

“There are a lot of precautions that are not going to be announced to students to help them make good decisions,” May said.

But some students are scared of these temporary rules rather than comforted by the extra security measures.

Freshman Jasmine Brown said many people have made plans to sleep somewhere else, but she is still considering her options.

“I don’t know what it’s going to be like,” she said.

Freshman Brittany Stigler said she thinks it’s good that residence halls are trying to keep students safe, but she’s still concerned.

“I think it’s necessary, but I also think it’s a little scary,” she said.

Stigler is also afraid of returning to her residence hall.

“I wouldn’t come back to the dorms if I went out,” she said.

She also mentioned that because of the extra cops on duty, she’s not planning on going out.

But the IU Police Department isn’t planning any major changes.

“For the most part, it’ll be the same type of procedures,” IUPD Capt. Jerry Minger said. “We will probably have fewer arrests than we do for football games.”

Starting at 7 p.m. Thursday, if a student is caught participating in illegal activities, he or she will be required to attend court at 8 a.m. Sunday. If a student doesn’t have any prior citations, he or she will have to pay $423 in cash, do community service from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday and take an alcohol education class.

Most students won’t come in contact with IUPD unless they’re doing something illegal or unusual, Minger said.

He advised students to “have a really great time.”

May said she also wants residents to have fun.

“It is what they say – it’s the greatest weekend in college,” she said.