by Stoosh on Thu Oct 04, 2012 1:17 pm
Holy crap.
I'm an alum as well (1998). The intersection of College and Maiden Streets is right near the corner of campus that houses Davis Hall and Dieter-Porter Hall. I was a psychology major at W&J and almost all of my psych classes were in Dieter-Porter. It's a pretty well-lit area, but it's also one of the corners of campus far removed from any security. That corner of campus kind of sits up a little bit from the street, so I guess there are areas there that are kind of "hidden" from regular traffic. At night, I can't say it's a very highly-patrolled area, but there's usually a fair amount of automobile traffic.
That's just sad. The campus security when I was there wasn't worth a crap. They usually had a staff of maybe 3-4 guys that patrolled on weeknights, and then increased it to maybe 6-7 on weekends, especially during the fall weekends when most of the parties happen. Then again, I was also there before much of the school expanded so I'm not sure if they've increased the security.
Even still, I don't know that I'd blame the school/lack of security for this.
There were issues on weekends from time to time with "townies". I wouldn't say trouble was frequent but whenever there were incidents, the Washington police were always called and they handled it. The worst thing that ever happened when I was there was an on-campus stabbing - one of the football players was stabbed in the back with a small knife trying to break up a fight that a townie started with another kid.
When I was there, for the most part, I tried to refrain from walking anywhere off campus at night by myself. It's not a horrible area overall but as TheHammer24 said, there were certain areas (ironically, mostly at the opposite end of campus from where this happened) that you didn't really want to be out by yourself after dark.