With more than 32,000 students attending Texas Tech University, safety not only does involves preventing crimes, but it also includes such things as laboratory safety.
“Texas Tech University is committed to ensuring the health and safety of our students, faculty, staff and visitors,” wrote President M. Duane Nellis in an email sent out in late August.
Steve Hinkle, captain with the Texas Tech Police Department, said he believes the campus is a safe place.
“Overall, as a team, the campus community is very concerned with the safety of the students,” Hinkle said.
Hinkle said most crime on campus involves criminal mischief, alcohol-related incidents, and theft.
“Thefts range from clothes in the laundry room to cell phones and wallets in the Rec Center, from students putting their stuff in the cubicles and walking off,” Hinkle said. “Ninety-nine percent of the theft reports that we take are students leaving their stuff out. Iit’s not because someone broke into their room. It’s a crime of opportunity.”
Burglary was the most common crime committed at Tech during 2012 with nine offenses, down from 21 in 2011, according to data from the Office of Postsecondary Education website, from statistics reported by Tech as required by the Clery Act.
Hinkle said violent crime on campus is rare but does occasionally happen.
“Most of the violent crime that happens out here is really not all that violent. It’s going to be your fights, assaults, aggravated assaults. Most of that is roommates, or at the Rec Center playing a pickup basketball game, people start talking, and a fight breaks out.”
Tech had five cases of forcible sexual offenses in 2012, all occurring in Tech’s student housing. Four cases of aggravated assault were also reported, according to the OPE’s data.
Tech’s campus saw 187 arrests in 2012. Liquor law violations accounted for 113 of those arrests and 72 were for drug abuse violations. On-campus student housing is where 63 of the liquor law violations arrests took place.
During the same period, the city of Lubbock had 104 cases of forcible rape, 1,522 cases of aggravated assault, and 3,099 cases of burglary, according to data from the FBI.
Comparison of the number of crimes committed on the Texas Tech campus and in Lubbock during the past 3 years. Data comes from the FBI and the Office of Postsecondary Education.
Hinkle said the Tech police department also has a working relationship with the Lubbock Police Department.
“We don’t really have anything in writing with them, but we work well with them,” Hinkle said. “Anytime they’ve got something going on or they’re looking for somebody that happens to be a student, they call us and we’ll pick them up for them and vice-versa.”
The Department of Environmental Health and Safety is also responsible for student safety on campus.
Cliff Harris, associate director of the department, said the department features an asbestos group, an environmental group, and a sanitarian dealing with food and water on campus.
“Our department is not just focused on one area,” Harris said. “We focus on the whole campus and everything that goes on on the campus. We’re looking at your occupational health and safety, your indoor air quality, your water, your food, your asbestos, the labs, anything to do with safety and environment on campus, we’re involved in that.”
Jared Martin, laboratory safety manager, said the department has been involved in creating a new Chemical Hygiene Plan for laboratory safety after an incident in January 2010 left a student seriously injured.
According to the university’s accident report, two students, whose names are redacted from the report, were working in Room 218 in the Chemistry Building when a compound being stirred detonated. One student lost three digits on his left hand, severely lacerated his right hand, and suffered scratches to his eyes and other exposed areas of the body.
Photo from the Chemical Lab incident. Taken from the Texas Tech accident report.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board’s report on the incident found that Tech’s laboratory safety standards were “created not to address physical hazards of chemicals, but rather health hazards as a result of chemical exposures.”
The report also stated previous laboratory incidents had not been documented and tracked, and that “safety accountability and oversight by the principal investigators, the department, and university administration at Texas Tech were insufficient.”
Martin said the university acted on recommendations made in the report.
“We had a chemical safety board come in that did an investigation,” Martin said, “and one of the criteria that they asked us to do was to visit the Chemical Hygiene Plan and do a revision. What we did, we took the Chemical Hygiene Plan, basically took it apart and rebuilt it using some of the more approved current practices.”
In January, the new plan was revealed. In a letter to the Texas Tech community, the interim university president and now provost, Lawrence Schovanec, said the new plan addressed several issues including duties of departmental chemical hygiene officers and laboratory safety captains, physical hazards in laboratories, and faculty, staff and student training.
On June 25, 2012, Rafael Ml e-Eraso, chair of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, sent the university a letter stating the board had found Tech had “planned and initiated actions that appear consistent with the intent of the recommendations.”
Martin said the university still faces a big problem trying to change the attitudes of those responsible for safety on campus.
“We have a systemic, or history, of the way things used to be done or how things were done,” Martin said. “It’s trying to change that culture to what safety is now.”
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