Google Maps Project

The map we created shows 8 campus crimes that were reported to public safety within the last week. We discovered that 4 out of the 8 crimes took place in the freshman residence hall Whitelaw. What is this saying about who is committing the crimes on campus? Are there just an abundance of unruly freshman, or have the upperclassmen just learned how to work their way around the system?



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Story-

A recent Google Map of Lyndon State’s campus crime shows that approximately half of a weekend’s worth of criminal activity took place in the freshman residence hall Whitelaw.
This map was only based on the dates of September 17-September 20 but still the amount of underage drinking and illegal use of marijuana raises some red flags. There was a smoking violation, two counts of underage drinking; one of those counts was accompanied with the marijuana use, and there was also a student who suffered dizziness due to a reported head injury. The creators of the Google Map began to wonder, what was the cause of this apparent unruly behavior in the freshman that doesn’t seem to show as much in the upperclassmen?
“It’s quite interesting [living on the first floor of Whitelaw],” remarked Matt Drew, a freshman electronic journalism arts major, “I would assume it’s because we have a new found sense of freedom.”
Drew went on to explain an average weekend in the residence hall, “the other night kids were up until like 5 in the morning. Someone called public safety on them. When they [public safety] came the whole suit reeked of weed. They just told the kids to go to bed.”
Go to bed? That was all the action that was taken? Well when public safety can’t actually pinpoint who did the crime no one can fairly be punished. This raises a new question; how much crime goes on that never gets reported?
“Wow I didn’t even know kids got busted that often around here!” said Georgia Cully, another freshman who lives in the residence hall, “I just assumed they all get away with it because there are still so many people doing it.”
Do these new freshman have no fear? Cully thinks that perhaps students feel invincible because they are finally off living on their own, mom and dad aren’t around to punish you anymore. With that being said is it something the first years will grow out of?
Drew thinks so, “I’ll be interested to see how many of these people actually make it back next semester… this is the sort of stuff that weeds out the bad eggs. The students that keep going clearly show more responsibility.”
This notion could be a plausible answer to the question brought up by the map’s creators regarding the behavioral differences between freshman and older students. The students who have stuck around semester after semester may be the ones who avoided such rowdy behaviors in their earlier years at the college, and still chose to abstain from such misconduct now.