As dissimilar as Duke and Durham may seem at times, the two share at least one thing: a perception among many that they are unsafe.
Both University and city officials are working to improve Duke and Durham's respective images as safe places to live and work. In both cases, officials say people's anxieties may be out of proportion with the dangers they actually face, due to a lack of clear communication about crime and security issues.
"There's a very real feeling of being unsafe on campus, and that's what communication is all about," said Clarence Birkhead, chief of the Duke University Police Department. "We want to paint a picture--one that is very realistic to us--that Duke as a campus is as safe [as], if not safer than, any other campus in America."
To achieve that goal, Birkhead is working with offices ranging from the Office of News and Communications, which is in charge of handling University-related media, to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, which often gives students their first impressions of life at Duke.
The University is also working with the City of Durham, which is on its own public relations offensive to help combat the image Durham has among other communities in and around the Research Triangle.
David Jarmul, director and associate vice president of news and communications, said the University has recognized a need to work with Durham on mending the area's reputation, as a Duke education necessarily comes hand in hand with a Durham experience. He noted the University's recent offerings of tours around the city, which were geared toward introducing students to life beyond the East Campus wall. In addition to trying to familiarize students with Durham, the University is also working with Director of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag to clear up some misconceptions students get even before setting foot on campus.
"It's not to scare them, but we don't want prospective students to see us as a Gothic Wonderland instead of understanding that there are issues of security on campus, as on any campus," Jarmul said. "If they can't deal with it, they shouldn't come."
Jarmul noted that an informational compact disc new students receive with their admissions materials includes a section for parents on security, which University officials hope will clarify security issues for new students and their parents.
The University is also looking to communicate with students about security issues during freshman orientation and more frequently throughout their college careers--a task that falls in part to the Office of Student Affairs.
Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta said increasing students' awareness of University measures to improve campus security will be an ongoing process.
"We have to send a consistent message about what life is like here, and we've got to be redundant," Moneta said. "There can't be any single message because many students will miss the first message we send out." Birkhead said DUPD hopes to get more students actively involved in the community policing process--a goal he said could lead students to better align their habits with good crime prevention.
"We deal with a lot of preventable crimes, just like any campus around the country," Birkhead said. "If we can get people talking about crime prevention then they will be aware of the potential for something to happen to them." He added that over half the crimes committed on campus are by people within the Duke community.
Birkhead said he will be working with the Facilities Management Department and Parking and Transportation Services to address concerns about safety in parking lots. He also noted that the University regularly reviews campus lighting.
"We're going to address problems where there are realistic unsafe conditions, but we're also overall going to address the messages students are receiving," Moneta said. "If we send a message that there's never an incident, then the first incident will send students climbing a wall. Instead, we need to acknowledge where there are problems and then help people feel more secure through things like increasing the public visibility of police."
Birkhead added that, statistically, Duke is doing very well in terms of security when compared to similar universities.
Durham is facing problems similar to those at Duke, with some saying the city's reputation is not in line with its actual living conditions. Reyn Bowman, president and CEO of the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the city's problem, like Duke's, can largely be addressed by improving communication about crime and security.
"We formed a 10-organization public information and communications council in the late 1990s to try to improve the quality of information and services we provide to the media," Bowman said, noting that imbalanced media reporting has made Durham seem much more dangerous than it really is.
Bowman said Durham has a lower crime rate than Raleigh did when it was at the same population level--a fact that comes as a surprise to many due to different media coverage of the two cities.
"Raleigh recently had a string of five murders in five days, yet it was never on the front page of their newspaper," Bowman said. "In Durham, it probably would have been a front-page story for about a month."
To try to improve its image, the city has tried to keep in better contact with the media and to put out more general information about the city. For example, the police department and school systems are offering more public information for the first time, and the city and county have expanded their public information databases.
The city has also taken an interest in Duke's own efforts to revamp its image as a safe campus, working collaboratively with the University whenever possible. Bowman said he has offered advice on how to research students' and employees' perceptions of Duke scientifically rather than anecdotally. In addition, a new agreement between the city and the University will allow Duke police to patrol neighborhoods around campus.
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