Code of conduct violations continue to rise

According to the Annual Crime Report, student code of conduct violations have increased by 24 percent since last year - marking the fifth consecutive year of rising infractions.

Roughly 14,000 students attend Clark. During the 2010-11 school year, there were 143 cases of student code of conduct violations. That is 28 more cases than the previous year and nearly triple the number in the 2007-08 school year.

The trend is something that Dean of Student Success & Retention Ted Broussard takes very seriously.

Since over 33 percent of the cases are plagiarism and cheating, Broussard is settled into the disciplinary routine that follows a conduct violation. He said that often times students are unaware that they ever broke the code. He suggests that students familiarize themselves with the student handbook and refer to the IRIS plagiarism tutorial on the Cannell Library website.

More sinister violations are far less frequent.

"Students here are pretty loyal to each other," said Ken Pacheco, Clark's director of security and safety. "There are only about three crimes a week."

While violent crimes only make up a small percentage of the conduct violations, the reality is that they can happen at anytime. "We have people who come to college with the intention of stealing," Pacheco said. "Some of them are students, some of them are not students."

One of the biggest problems that security faces is identifying a suspect. Students are obligated by the code of conduct to produce some form of identification when asked to do so by a security officer.

The difficulty security faces in this situation is that some students won't do it no matter how nicely an official may ask. When he or she refuses to do so, security has to attempt to name the suspect another way. If they do identify him or her at some point, he or she would also be charged with a failure to comply violation.

Pacheco said he wants to see students protect themselves from would-be thieves by eliminating crimes of opportunity. He said that break-ins are rare, but one is too many. He believes that students should not bring anything to school that cannot be taken to class with them.

"Believe me, the first place they look is underneath the seat. They do look in glove boxes," said Pacheco. "If you don't need it, don't bring it with you."

In the event of an emergency, students should call security officers for an escort or report an incident at 360-992-2133.