Yet another robbery occurring in the downhill Powderhouse Blvd. vicinity should make the entire Tufts community - students, administration and police alike - take note. Friday morning's incident is the fourth off-campus armed robbery of Tufts students this school year and the second at the intersection of Powderhouse Blvd. and Packard Ave.
While the blame for any crime, be it sexual assault or robbery, always lies with the perpetrator, there is no reason Tufts and its students can't take precautions to help prevent such incidents from happening again.
After the spree of sexual assaults last spring, students made their own safety a top priority. Rather than walking alone at night, they walked in groups, carpooled or utilized the police escort service.
Unfortunately, when the attacks stopped, so did the cautious behavior. Many students now seem to have regressed to the same carefree attitude regarding late-night (or early-morning) safety. The series of armed robberies, however, should be enough to prod students into a heightened safety mode, which would hopefully continue even after any robberies stopped occurring.
We should not wait until crime occurs to be more alert; rather, raised awareness and safe behavior should be the standard, which would help to prevent further crimes from occurring.
This is a message that can resonate with the Tufts University Police Department as well as with students. The heightened police presence off campus last spring, especially in areas where sexual assaults had occurred, undoubtedly helped to curb crime.
A similar increase in patrols of the Powderhouse Blvd. area would certainly serve the same purpose - and would be much appreciated by students.
In addition, information is one of the most powerful tools that TUPD can use to influence student behavior. Had students been aware of the potentially sexual nature of Friday morning's robbery, many more would have taken safety precautions over the weekend. Public Safety should be congratulated for its rapid dissemination of the alert from Friday, and the more details given in such reports, the more students will pay attention.
Alerts from Somerville would also be helpful in raising safety awareness. Last spring, many students were not aware of the multiple rapes occurring in Somerville until they happened to Tufts students.
The same principle applies for robberies: After the Dec. 18 robbery at gunpoint, the news that two more incidents had occurred to non-Tufts students came out. Knowing this sort of information beforehand will help to make students more cognizant of their potentially risky behaviors.
With a combined effort from students and police, we can hopefully prevent any more such crimes from occurring.
