North Campus: 'The Jungle' finally gets tamed

By: Matthew Monks

Posted: 12/4/01

J.B. Rochette likes to reminisce about the good old days in the Jungle. Two years ago, when the fifth-semester natural resources major was a freshman living in the North campus dorms, the place was wild: he could drink with his door open and the floor parties would last all night. North is called the Jungle for a reason, he said.

"Anyone who lives in the dorms and wants to party -- they lived here," Rochette said.

Then, in January 2000, UConn Police and the Department of Residential Life assigned a community police officer to deal specifically with North and Northwest dorms, and things started to change. Resident assistants got stricter and the floor parties got broken up more quickly, he said. Anyone underage who wanted to drink had to do it with his or her door closed.

More crimes were committed and arrests made at North campus over a two-year period than at any other dorm on campus, a review of a computerized police log obtained from the UConn Police Department shows.

North, located across from the Life Sciences building on North Eagleville Road, is the largest dorm complex, with eleven buildings housing 1,347 students.

From June 1999 to the end of May 2001, a total of 210 incidents or arrests occurred at North, 98 more than the 112 at Towers, the dorm with the second highest number of reported crimes. North accounted for roughly 25 percent of crimes in campus residences, the logs show, yet it has just 13 percent the residential students.

According to Rochette, the crackdown has changed the climate at North.

"This is the calmest year I've seen," Rochette said. "Everything across the board is less -- drinking, vandalism. If there's a party, it does get broken up. The RAs call the cops immediately."

The Jungle has changed from an unruly, 7-nights-a-week fiesta to a calmer, more orderly atmosphere. Rochette credits Community Police Officer Debbie Booker.

Booker, the only community police officer at UConn, said North was assigned its own police officer two years ago because, traditionally, it's been an epicenter of crime. On weekends it would tie up valuable police resources, she said, because officers would have to make several calls a night.

"An officer or two would spend a lot of time here every weekend," she said.

Since she started the job, she said, arrests have gone up and property damage from vandalism has gone down.

She estimates making an average of two or three arrests a weekend, mostly for vandalism. Most of the students she arrests are not even residents of North. Non-students and students who live in other dorms are drawn to North because of its reputation.

"You get people walking around randomly, looking for the party because this is the Jungle," she said. To reduce problems caused by non-residents, she continually reminds residents they are responsible for people they let into the building.

According to UConn Police Maj. Ronald Blicher, the police department may deal differently with students and non-students committing offenses in the dorms. Non-students are more likely to get arrested because they do not have the option of being disciplined through DRL, he said. For students, an arresting officer has the option of arresting them or referring them to DRL, especially for minor offenses like vandalism and underage drinking.

Booker said she has three options when she catches underage students with alcohol: She can make them pour it out; she can refer them to DRL; or she can arrest them. When she first started at North, she was lenient, she said, and would make most students just pour out their alcohol without an arrest. But now that they are used to her presence, she is cracking down, she said.

"The word is out," she said. " This community police thing is here ... I can count on my hand the times I made them pour it out this semester. I'm not tolerating it anymore."

Vandalism accounted for nearly half of all the reported incidents at North, 97 of 212 cases over two years, the police logs show. The most common vandalism has been the destruction of ceiling tiles, bathroom sinks and outside doors.

Booker blames most of it on alcohol.

"Ninety-nine percent of this is alcohol and drugs," she said. "Most of it is alcohol. If it wasn't for alcohol most of them wouldn't break anything."

Rochette agreed. "It's people on the floor having too much to drink and looking for something to do. Just being clowns."

Making arrests for drinking should cut down on other problems, she said. "If they see more and more people arrested, maybe they'll stop doing stuff," she said. "I'm stopping the vandalism, the fights, the floor parties and the sexual assaults by arresting you for alcohol."

The number of arrests at North hasn't skyrocketed since Booker was assigned in January 2000, but the police logs clearly reflect more alcohol-related charges. Over the two-year period ending in May 2001, nine arrests were made for liquor law violations. Of the nine, five were made over three months in the winter 2001 semester. All six drug arrests and 12 arrests for disorderly conduct occurred after Booker began duties at North.

Booker tries to be visible. She staggers her patrols and doesn't have a police car parked outside her office, located under the cafeteria. She said she wants residents to assume she is there all the time. If students think she's in the building, she said, they won't be as likely to misbehave.

"It's kind of the threat of her," Rochette said. "Kids won't act so crazy anymore or you might leave the door shut when drinking."

Booker said she is satisfied with the drop in property damage at North, but said she has yet to reach her ultimate goal -- to destroy the legend of the Jungle. Some residents have moved out, she said, but the spirit of North as being party-central is something many residents celebrate and that won't die easily.

"I've had bosses that graduated back in the '80s and they talk about what they used to do when they lived here ... It's the history of North, " she said. "We're trying to stop that stigma and that's hard to do."