By Bryan Winstead / Full360 Reporter
Windows smashed. Exit signs dangling from wires. Decorative pumpkins splattered outside of the dorm halls. In some cases, doors are removed. These are just a few examples of vandalism incidents on campus, crimes that university officials acknowledge and are working to address.
DelVal’s Dean of Students Timothy Poirier talks about how the university is working to combat these offenses but said the crimes are difficult to catch. He said the dormitories, where these incidents occur, do not have cameras and rely on people coming forward to report the incidents.
Poirier said, “I always want people to report things, because it could be a safety issue.”
Delaware Valley University public records show few vandalism in its most recent security report, despite a higher number of incidents that students and resident assistants recalled. The annual report shows two acts of vandalism in 2022, one incident of vandalism in 2020 and no incidents of vandalism in 2021.
Poirier said public safety is working to encourage more students to report any vandalism they see or witness.
When vandalism is called in or reported, Public Safety documents it. Poirier can then give notice to the student about why they are getting called into the office. There is a hearing for the suspected individual and the student is entitled to make an appeal.
University officials try to avoid charging students, he said, but sometimes it’s necessary and sometimes officials will involve the local police if there is a repeat offender.
Residential Assistant Marguerite Thompson has witnessed the aftermath of vandalism in the dorm hall where she works. Examples, she said, include the destruction of “Bulletin board decorations, exit signs, windows being broken.” She questioned why people would destroy such property.
Sophomore Bobby Jones recalled an incident during his Freshman year when doors were pulled off the walls in Work Hall. The same year, a stall door was ripped out of the bathroom. “That left one less stall,” he said.
That same year, and in the same dorm hall, Nolan Massaro, now a sophomore, said he sometimes feared leaving his room without a air-soft pistol because some students would have air-soft guns and would shoot other students with them. The main target, they recall, was the bathrooms. With the air-soft pellets on the ground and the water and soap from the shower, made it very easy to slip.
Students interviewed for this Full360 report all asked the same question: “Why do people do it?”
Junior Vinny Maldonado is concerned about accountability and wonders if students face punishment. Jones said many “people think it is a harmless prank.” Massaro points out if someone messes with a bathroom, “you can’t use one of the toilets, and there are only so many.” He wonders why someone would do that to their own home.
Thompson wishes that more people would step up and report the crimes when they see them. But often, she said, it takes the Dean to step in for people to talk and report crimes.
“I wish people cared from the start,” she said.
When someone vandalizes, it does not always get reported to Public Safety, according to Thompson. The students on campus, interviewed for this story, who might be a victim of vandalism don’t want to report the small things like having decorations taken off their door or having their pumpkins smashed during Halloween.
Poirier wants people to report more incidents so the university can investigate and respond.
That way, he said, problems get solved faster.