News-Letter

Like most aspects of life, se- curity can be inspected through the keen reason of economics. Every student weighs certain risks against potential rewards for his actions. For every perceived benefit, there are implicit costs. While Hopkins' alcohol policy has created an incentive for students to venture off-campus on weekends, the school has not invested enough money in building up a fleet of security escort vans that can keep these students safe.

According to the Annual Security Report, released last week by the Security Department, the school has vastly improved the safety of the Homewood campus. More blue light phones have been installed, there is an increased security presence "both on and off campus," security escorts that "are trained and held accountable for the safety and security of their passengers" have been hired and the AMRs, Buildings A and B, and Wolman and McCoy Halls have become as impermeable to intruders as the Guantanamo Bay detention center is to human rights attorneys.

Bearing this in mind, your humble correspondent decided to test the general competence of the security escort van service.

The simplest measure of its performance is average waiting times for escort shuttles. I called for three shuttles, varying the time of year (summer or fall), day of the week (weekday or weekend) and distance traveled (short and long).

In all three cases, the shortest wait time was 20 minutes, and the longest wait time was 60 minutes. One summer weeknight, it took three phone calls and sixty minutes of waiting to get from my University West apartment building to the Marylander. The third time I called to ask where my shuttle was, the security dispatcher refused to give me any details about the number of vans at her disposal and also refused to give me an approximate figure on the amount of time I would have to wait for the van to arrive. She also assured me that a van was "on its way."

Students are rational. They weigh the cost of waiting for a van against the benefit of safely traveling to their destination. When the cost is too high, namely, the waiting time is in excess of about 20 minutes, the average student decides to risk walking through unlit streets and alleyways.

In another phone call with security, I was told that the number of vans operating on a given night varies from four to six. Assuming a capacity of ten students per van and the best-case scenario of six vans in operation at any given time the school has a van fleet capable of servicing a whopping 1.5 percent of its undergraduate population. This figure doesn't even account for the numerous other university affiliates who might want to make use of a security escort service. Given how long we have to wait for a shuttle, it is no surprise that so many students risk walking home in the dark.

Security must decrease the waiting time for a security shuttle. The solution is easy. Purchase more vans, and hire more people to drive them. If there is a dearth of potential drivers, offer a higher wage. It's the simple arithmetic of supply and demand.

Now let's look at our illogically harsh alcohol policy. Condemning the use of alcohol in dormitories puts students at risk, since doing so forces students to venture off-campus into predatory fraternity houses and unregulated bars and clubs, putting them at even higher risk.

I applaud StuCo president Atin Agarwal for helping re-open E-Level (now known as the "HopStop"), allowing for safe alcohol consumption in a university-owned venue. Nonetheless, more must be done.

At one point, E-Level was a full-time bar. Hopkins should bring it back. Reopening the bar in Levering would do two things. First, it would create an incentive for students to remain on campus, thereby decreasing all of the negative externalities that accompany off-campus partying, including noise complaints from sleepless neighbors.

Moreover, student were once allowed to consume alcohol on the Beach and gather there at night. After a number of instances of undergraduate misbehavior, these privileges were rescinded. The impetus for this is misguided. All of the above benefits of allowing on-campus alcohol consumption apply here, as well. The administration should again allow alcohol on the Beach. We should be given a second chance. As previously noted, bringing alcohol back to campus has many benefits.

Looser rules for on-campus alcohol use would decrease the "forbidden fruit" effect of alcohol consumption. Economists and psychologists routinely show that decreasing the taboo surrounding certain practices has a corresponding decline in their occurrence.

As undergraduates, we have a responsibility to actively communicate with the deans and other decision-makers in the administration to help them make our campus safer. In turn, those administrators, as I've discovered, still have a lot of work to do before we can declare that Hopkins is a safe place to be a student.

--Neil Shenai is a junior international studies and economics major from Rochester, N.Y.

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