Criminals often target
college students
by Kim McCoy
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Bobby Rush thought he had done everything right.
While visiting his girlfriend, the Florida State University student locked
the doors of his Nissan Pathfinder and parked in a lit parking lot at her
apartment complex.
But his vehicle, along with four others parked at High Park Village,
were reportedly burglarized last month.
"1 just blew up," Rush said. "I was so mad. All the stuff I had in my
car came out of my own pocket."
About $1,200 worth of stereo equipment was taken, he said. The
coffee table, golf clubs and clothes in his vehicle weren't touched.
"It's a significant problem," said Mark Meadows, an investigator
for Tallahassee Police Department's burglary unit. "It's significant that
so many happen to a certain group of our citizens, which is college
students."
Although auto burglaries reported in the city dropped from 1,900 in
2000 to 1,600 in 2001, the problem is still considered prevalent, Mead-
ows said
Students tend to be the victims of auto burglaries simply because
they make up a major portion of the city's apartment dwellers, Mead
ows said.
Its much easier for a criminal to take something hum a car parked
amidst hundreds of other ones than it is to take something from a car
parked in a homeowner's driveway.
"Someone's standing next to car (in an apartment complex), no one
knows who the car belongs to," Meadows said.
Students have been victims of auto burglary in the parking lots of
local nightclubs as well. Women who don't want to take their purses
into the clubs often leave them underneath car seats or place them in
the trunk of the car once they pull into the club's parking lot, Meadows
said.
"Sometimes these guys are watching for that," he said. "You see a
car with four or five girls get out of the car, there's a purse in the car."
But burglars will typically hit any large parking lot. such as a movie
There's,
like,
a lot to
'like'
t'.inight`Riillet46nri sews Service
Here's the problem: Temple University
associate English professor Muffy E.A.
Siegel has studied the issue, and says teen
agers' use of "like" is not always so bad.
Siegel published a study of the word in
the Journal of Semantics and concluded
that "like" - unlike sentence-fillers "you
know," or the ever-popular "uh" and "urn"
- imparts particular meaning to a sentence.
"Like," in fact, can change a sentence in
several ways, according to Siegel's re
search, and that makes it worthy of study
and at least a modicum of respect.
That may not convince many who have
crusaded against the teen-agers' abuse of
the word since it was popularized in the
mid-1980s by Southern California "valley
girls." According to Siegel's paper, schol
ars expected the "non-standard" uses of
"like" to disappear as quickly as they had
materialized; however, not only has the
word persisted, but it has spread like an
epidemic throughout the adolescent female
population.
Boys use it less, and researchers don't
know why. Some theories suggest it's be
cause young women are generally not as
secure in their assertions. Siegel's theory:
"like" happens when the mouth gets ahead
of the brain.
For some of her research, Siegel relied
heavily on her teen-age daughter. Our own
completely non-scientific studies show
that the average teen-age girl employs the
word in such prodigious quantities and
staccato fashion that it is nearly impossible
to keep an accurate count. One mild ex
ample, overheard during a 14-year-old's
telephone conversation:
Girl: "It's like, OK, did you, like, see
her at school ... like, you won't believe this
... I think I'm going to just, like, read a
magazine, and do something, like, unbrain
ish."
Siegel and others have identified the
many guises of "like." At its most
uninspiring, its a synonym for "said." It
could also be a way to warn of an exag
geration ("It's, like, a million degrees out
there"); or inject some caution into a sen
tence when a speaker is not absolutely cer
tain of its accuracy ("She has, like, three
Luinea pigs.") And it can be used for em
phasis ("That is so, like, last week.")
"What parents can feel good about,"
Siegel said, "is it's not a useless dumb word
that kids are using in informal speech."
For the anti-"like" forces among us, she
says, there is a glimmer of hope. As with
any expression that becomes part of the
teen lexicon, the word may simply fade
with time or overuse.
But it is not likely.
EMU
NATIoNAL
ima
CAMPUS
Friday, September 20, 2002
theater or mall. They usually work at night under the cover of dark
ness and tend to go for car stereo equipment, laptops, cell phones and
radar detectors, Meadows said.
On-campus auto burglary does happen, but it's not a major prob
lem, according to police officials at Florida A&M and Florida State
universities
FSU is ending the second year of an initiative to curb auto theft.
The school was awarded a Florida Motor Vehicle Theft Prevention
Authority grant from the Attorney General's Office. The department
is using this year's grant of $59,637 to pay students to patrol campus
parking lots and report suspicious incidents to police, said Lt. Linda
Riley.
The program is credited with helping auto thefts drop from 45 in
2000 to 26 in 2001, Riley said. It also helped auto burglaries drop
from 10 in 2000 to seven in 2001.
"Their presence _ being out and about in golf carts _ also reduced
the number of break-ins," Riley said.
The FAMU campus recently noticed an increase in thefts from ve
hicles on campus, said Michael Wallace, assistant police chief of the
FAMU Police Department. There were 21 auto burglaries reported
in 2000 and 43 in 2001. But vehicle thefts decreased from 22 in 2()00
to 10 in 2001.
To help curb crime, the campus became a member of Big Bend
Crime Stoppers last school year, Wallace. The program offers a cash
reward to those who provide information about a crime that leads to
an arrest or conviction, he said.
High Park Village, where Rush's vehicle was burglarized. has tried
to form a student Crime Watch, but could never get enough partici
pation, Manager Lisa Carter said. The complex is planning to add
more lighting and to cut shrubbery, she said.
And, what are your chances of seeing that CD player again? Re
trieving property stolen from a car can he a challenge for police,
Meadows said.
"A lot of times people have serial numbers, so we're able to track it
that way," he said. "But all too often items that are stolen arc kept tor
personal use or sold on street or just not recovered."
BAD CREDIT IS LIKE A BAD NICKNAME.
IT WILL STICK WITH YOU FOR YEARS.
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