By Linda Hall
Daily Record
WOOSTER, Ohio — It was Day 5 on the job Friday for Steve Glick as the new director of security and protective services at The College of Wooster.
As the former chief of police of the Wooster Police Department, Glick said his title won’t really change in the new job.
“They’re going to call me ‘chief,’” Glick said, and “that’s fine.”
More important than his label are his credentials.
“I am bringing some law enforcement (jurisdiction) on campus because I retain my commission through the city as a reserve officer,” he emphasized.
“I have full police authority when I’m working,” Glick said.
“One of the common reasons police come on campus is drug issues,” he said.
“Now with me on campus I can do that,” Glick said, referring to his ability to file criminal charges and confiscate drug paraphernalia, although, he said, “we’re still working on the nuances of that.”
Glick addressed issues brought up by College of Wooster neighbors at an Aug. 3 meeting to which residents in a two-block area around the campus were invited to Kittredge Hall to talk about acommunity/ college concerns.
One of the biggest brought up by residents was off-campus parties with disruptive and potentially illegal behavior.
Their confusion on whether the city or college has jurisdiction over behavior in off-campus housing is a legitimate one.
“That’s a very important distinction,” Glick said, because the college does not have any direct control over (off-campus housing not owned by The College of Wooster) or authority.”
That being said, “it doesn’t mean we can’t as an institution take some action,” Glick said, “but it is circumstance-dependent.”
While there is cooperation between the police department and campus security, the police department is primarily responsible for behavior of students in non-college-owned houses.
Campus security is “strictly limited to college property,” he said. “It is important to know that security officers are not law enforcement.”
College-owned housing on Spink Street, University Street, College Avenue and along Beall Avenue have signs indicating college ownership, he said, acknowledging Fairview Apartments, owned by the college on Wayne Avenue, do not have a sign.
Glick frequently checked last year with the police department to see whether calls were being received from the apartments.
He said there weren’t many, except for “a couple of alcohol violations early in the year (concerning) students walking to and fro (on the street).”
“One of the things we’re looking at in the master plan is whether existing signage is adequate and appropriate,” he said.
Referring to incidents occurring in off-campus housing not owned by the college, Glick said, “We may go down there anyway to identify students,” he said, “but to actually close down the party, so to speak, that’s going to be the police department. It’s a subtle difference.”
Glick also stressed he wasn’t telling residents not to call campus security in those instances, but ultimately the police department will be integrally involved.
If the college owns the housing where a problem takes place, “that’s simple,” Glick said. Campus security has jurisdiction, but may call the police department to assist.
No matter the jurisdiction, “the expectations are the same,” Glick pointed out. Students should have respect for their neighbors, they shouldn’t break bottles, they shouldn’t litter and they shouldn’t be engaging in underage drinking, even though “the consequences of getting caught may be different.”
It may involve civil charges as well as the judicial process at the college.
“Students face a double whammy potentially,” Glick said, in the civil courts and on campus.
“The College has a pretty good, robust judicial process,” he said, through which “the students are held accountable.”
If students get into trouble off-campus, that process “can kick in as well.”
Glick said the tension experienced in security and law enforcement matters is “not unique to (Wooster) and The College of Wooster.”
In fact, “my gut feeling is we’re nowhere near as bad as some places are,” he said.
Additionally, "(these problems are) never going to go away completely; the goal is to have (them) be the exception rather than the rule.”
Substance abuse, particularly alcohol and illegal drugs, resulting in disorderly conduct, including public urination, “are not unique to college students,” Glick pointed out.
Glick said possession and purchase of these substances may lead to jail time and fines, but very rarely does an offender get the maximum penalty for a first offense.
But the offender should “be held accountable and pay a consequence,” just not the maximum one the first time, he said.
While assault can also result from out-of-control parties, “I don’t see a lot of violent crime on campus,” Glick said.
“We’ve had some issues last year (involving) some of the minority students,” he said, who were “called names based on their ethnicity and (received) vague threats of violence based on their ethnicity.”
He doesn’t think students are necessarily afraid to walk down Beall Avenue, but does think some students have been surprised by those types of occurrences.
Those incidents make him “mad. I think (they’re) totally uncalled for,” he said, and his answer is “to maintain a presence (of law enforcement). I did try to increase patrols.”
While a person’s belief system cannot be changed, it can be made to feel very uncomfortable, he said.
The felony assault several years ago mentioned by an attendee at the Aug. 3 community meeting was part of “incidents throughout the city; some of the victims ended up being college students,” Glick said.
“There isn’t a fence around The College of Wooster,” he said, which means the campus has “the potential of regular street crimes that occur elsewhere.”
His advice is to “walk away, run away and report” incidents.
“If people have questions, I really encourage them to call me and to let me know about it,” he said, adding, “We can’t help solve problems if we don’t know about it before it becomes a crisis.”
It’s a much more difficult situation once it becomes a crisis, he said.
Glick, himself a College of Wooster graduate from the class of 1979, got his start in law enforcement on the campus; and when it was announced he would take over the head security position at the college, Dean of Students Kurt Holmes said he anticipated Glick would be “responding (to issues) before they become a big problem.”
Holmes also said Glick’s position would be a complement to the Wooster Ethic, which outlines an academic code of integrity as well as one of social responsibility and is an overarching policy about appropriate behavior for students, staff and faculty.
Copyright 2011 Dix Communications Group