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Perspectives
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Sarah Kickler
EDITORIAL EDITOR
Mike Schmierbach
NIGHT EDITORS
Evan A. Denbaum
Nicole Krueger
Police too slow in responding to 911 call
It took about 20 minutes for
police to arrive at an
apartment where a
burglary was under way
W hile most members of
the community prefer
to see the West Univer
sity area as a pleasant
off-campus place for students to live,
recent incidents make it almost im
possible to ignore the reality that the
area is not only growing more dan
gerous, but the protection it receives
from law enforcement is not ade
quate.
If the drive-by shooting at E. 13th
Avenue and Ferry Street early this
September and the
riot that occurred
on E. 17th Avenue
last weekend do not
demonstrate this to
city officials, I’m
afraid nothing will.
In a recent meet
Nicole
Kristal
ing with City Coun
cil member Bobby
Lee, I discovered
the West University
neighborhood has
Deen a main source ol criminal activi
ty for some time. Lee himself has
been the victim of burglaries and
stalking.
College students and their safety
must not be a high enough priority to
merit additional police protection,
and I say this because I experienced
this neglect firsthand a few weeks ago.
At 2:45 a.m. on Sept. 28,1 left my
apartment to drive a friend home. I
returned home five minutes later. As
I exited my car, one of my neighbors
approached me.
“Do you live in that apartment up
there?”
1 nodded.
“Well, two guys just crawled into
your kitchen window. We’re on the
phone with 911 right now. You can
come on back to our apartment until
the cops get here.”
In their living room, another one of
my neighbors was talking on the
phone to a 911 dispatcher. She told
the dispatcher I was there, and the
dispatcher asked to talk to me.
As the woman asked me to repeat
my address and phone number three
times, I grew progressively more frus
trated.
I told her that if an officer did not
come right away, my possessions
would be stolen.The dispatcher told me
that her main concern was the safety of
my roommate who might be inside.
Yet police failed to arrive at the
scene until 20 minutes later. If my
vr*E%
Q/
%
4*,
1
o
GO
roommate had been home, she proba
bly would have been victimized long
before they arrived.
At that moment, one of the neigh
bors who was looking out the blinds
shouted, “They just took off up the al
ley on a couple of bikes.”
“Did they have bikes before?” I
asked.
“No,” she replied.
I was furious. I dropped the phone
and ran into my apartment. My bike
and my roommate’s bike were gone. 1
ran upstairs. My guitar and my
$1,500 four-track recorder had been
stolen as well. My two neighbors
came to the apartment. I told them
not to touch anything.
We went downstairs and waited on
my porch for the police to arrive. At
that moment, the two burglars
walked down the alleyway. They
were carrying beer bottles.
“Is that them?” I whispered.
"Yes, let’s get inside.”
The two burglars had the nerve to
say hello. We locked the door and ran
upstairs. I called 911.
I screamed at the dispatcher, telling
her that the burglars were in my front
yard and that officers still had not ar
rived. She asked me in which direc
tion they were headed. I angrily re
minded her that I was inside the
house, protecting myself from assault
and for that reason, I was not standing
outside and watching them.
My neighbors and I went down
stairs, and, after another three to five
minutes, two officers arrived. One
left to do an area search. But it was
too little, too late.
The other officer went into my
apartment, and I told her which
items had been touched and moved.
She removed a partial print from the
window pane. She took our state
ments, commented on what a busy
night it had been and left. By that
time, it was 4 a.m.
I stayed awake wondering how the
city can afford to spend $30 million
for repairs on the Ferry Street Bridge
Corridor, and yet it cannot spare a
few bucks to hire a few extra cops to
cover a high-crime area on a Saturday
night.
The only conclusion I could reach
was that students are still not being
taken seriously in this community
because of their age. But how can
their contribution of more than $150
million into the local economy not be
taken seriously?
Every time I’ve called the station
with a noise complaint about my
neighbors, police have responded
within five minutes; yet, the one time
I called to report a more serious crime
in my residence, they responded in
20 minutes.
Eugene police officers not only
need the means (more officers on the
streets) to respond to crime in the
West University neighborhood on the
weekends, but they also need to pri
oritize the emergencies over the
noise complaints and adjust their re
sponse time accordingly.
I lost property valued at more than
$2,000 because of the city’s reluc
tance to prioritize my age group. I fol
lowed all the rules. I followed all the
protocol. I called for assistance. But
assistance was too late.
Nicole Kristal is a columnist for the
Emerald. Her columns appear on alter
nate Wednesdays. Her views do not nec
essarily represent those of the Emerald.
Quoted
“Herlectures
have inspired count
less audiences
across the country
and around the
world. Her achieve
ments over the
years have given
black women a role
model from which
to draw confidence
and pride in a time
when such a figure
was so earnestly
needed."
RyanMaughn,
writing in Friday’s
Emerald about Maya
Angeiou’s perfor
mance at the Huit
Center.
‘This was a taste
ofAngelouather
best—a riveting,
funny and gloriously
down-to-earth
speaker with a gift
for putting people at
ease, urging them to
laugh at themselves
and showing them
how it’s done. A gift
ed writer and con
summate per
former, Angelou
plies her crafts well
—delighting in the
lyrical power of lan
guage, sharing her
joy."
Kimber Williams,
reviewing Angelou's
performance in
Tuesday’s Register
Guard.
“At the inaugural,
Bill Clinton, whose
signature on welfare
‘reform'would fol
low three years later,
used Maya Angetou,
a very weak poet, as
anew.mediagenic
form of lawn jockey,
and no one in the
new black-culture
orthodox, as far as
I know, has uttered a
word of criticism
about her willing
ness to play the
, ‘Out List’ voluntary
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Al
liance (LGBTA) would like to clarify a statement
made in Tuesday's Coming Out Week article [ODE,
Oct. 7). Because the LGBTA is concerned about
protecting the safety and privacy of its members, it
is necessary to correct any misconceptions created
by the definition Doug Irving used to describe what
we call the Out List. The LGBTA does not “main
tain an ‘Out List’ — a full page of names of students
who have formally come out,” as was stated in the
article.
The Out List is instead a full page ad the LGBT
Educational and Support Services Program pro
duces in cooperation with the LGBTA as part of
National Coming Out Week. The point of this list
is to acknowledge the importance of being visible
and to break stereotypes.
The list does not list every out LGBT person on
campus that we know of, but only those who have
given their explicit consent to be on this list. Any
one interested in being on the Out List picks up
LETTERS TB THE EDITOR
and fills out an Out List form. After these forms are
handed in, we carefully double check and verify
the identities of the people on the forms and that
they want to be on the Out List as either an ally or
an LGBT individual.
We publish the Out List once a year around Na
tional Coming Out Day, and we do not maintain it
throughout the rest of the year as the article sug
gests. Nor do we use this list for any other purposes
than for this one Coming Out Week ad.
This year’s list will be in this Friday’s Emerald. If
you have any questions about the Out List and the
careful process we use to create it, we encourage
you to contact the LGBTA at 346-3360.
Karen Vittek
LGBTA co-director
Add-drop compromise
Ah, yes, University politics has once again es
poused the old adage: Why compromise when you
can have it entirely your way? Sorry, folks, this
won’t work for class registration procedures any
better than it has in the past.
When Bill Miner says that students need more
time to get a sense for a class, he is entirely correct.
However, he appears to have overlooked the rea
sons that the deadlines were changed in the first
place students who wanted to be in some class
es found themselves locked out until the third
week because students who were “uncertain” did
n’t drop until the last minute.
Why not recognize that one week may be plenty
of time in some situations and dreadfully inade
quate in others? An alternative to the extremes —
one vs. three weeks to drop — could go like this:
When a class is 85 percent full, students should
have to make their decisions quickly, on the
grounds that certain more eager students may be
locked out. Otherwise, let students have more time
to decide.
Miner seems to have forgotten that when you
push the pendulum too far in one direction, it will
eventually and inevitably — swing back toward
you. Let’s try compromise, eh?
Sean Williams
_____ Music education
Vince Passaro,
writing about
African American lit
erature in the July,
1997, Harper’s.
CORRECTION
The LGBTA
should have been
identified as the
Lesbian, Gay, Bi
sexual, Transgen
der Alliance in the
article, "‘Coming
Out Week’ encour
ages support of
gay community”
on Oct. 7. The
Emerald regrets
the error.