University of Colorado

Background
Starting in the academic year 2004-05, UCB began to work with the Boulder Municipal Court in an effort to improve their understanding of the young adults (18-25 years of age) who were coming before the court and the patterns, if any, to the behaviors of these people. A group, called the City-Campus Task Force, was formed with membership from the court, city, and campus. It was charged with trying to define the types of cases that might be most important to look at in terms of their effect on the two communities. The Task Force concluded that there were about 30 state laws and city ordinances that were of most interest. The group then turned the project over to the director of the former A Matter of Degree program and asked him to work with staff members charged with monitoring what was happening in the local community, particularly as a result of the annual changes in the demographics caused by the return each fall of students to the university and community. This working group dubbed these particular cases the “quality of life” offenses and began to track them month by month and over the period of the academic year.

UCB had data covering a couple of years for all the reported offenses going through the campus judicial system, the alcohol education program for first time alcohol offenders, and now the Municipal Court. These data were then analyzed by such factors as type of offense, the location of the offense, the month, the day of the week, the hour of the day, and the sex of the alleged offender. Somewhat later data on offenders were separated according to whether they were UCB students or not. Finally, the findings from this analysis were displayed in bar graphs for every day of every month of the year for two academic years.

The first thing that could be seen from these graphs was the fact that the campus and local community experienced their greatest level of disruption during the first six weekends of the fall semester and never again would they come close to such levels of disturbances for the rest of the school year. The second thing that stood out was how clearly these patterns held year after year. In fact, if the years were removed from the titles of the graphs and just the months were known it was almost impossible to tell which year was being reviewed. Third, the concept of “weekend” needed to include the period from Thursday evening into early Sunday morning. Finally, it was noted that UCB students were not the source of a majority of the quality of life offenses committed by adults 18-25 years of age. However, there were important differences in the make up of the offenders when looking at a specific type of offense. For example, UCB students were more likely to be found responsible for hosting nuisance parties but not likely to be found responsible for brawling.

Students from the Geography Department with advanced geographic information system (GIS) skills had plotted the location of all the alcohol outlets in Boulder. Then students plotted the new quality of life data. By plotting each month separately and then putting them all together in a PowerPoint presentation it became possible to recreate what some neighborhoods were experiencing each academic year. What became particularly clear in such a presentation was how concentrated were these quality of life offenses to two particular areas of the city and how clearly these offenses had a cumulative effect on these parts of the community because they were exposed to these offenses over and over again, year after year, even though each offender was apt to be new to the area.

Because the Task Force was now aware of when and where offenses were taking place and that these patterns where concentrated during the first six weeks of the year, it became possible for the Task Force to develop strategies and implement special programs to respond to this state of affairs. The campaign they eventually adopted became known as the “Fall Focus on Community” (FFC). In it first year (fall 2006) it consisted of many different phases and FFC activities, such as:

• A press conference held by the city manager, UCB’s vice chancellor for student affairs, and one of the student government leaders. The conference announced the new FFC campaign and some of its components.
• An agreement was reached with the Municipal Court and campus Judicial Affairs Office to expedite quality of life cases during at least the first six weeks of the fall semester. As part of this effort there was also an agreement that UCB’s Restorative Justice Program would work more closely with the Municipal Court whenever the court wanted to refer a case before it to this program.
• Joint campus and city police patrols were implemented along with an increase in the number of officers in the neighborhoods closest to the campus.
• A cadre of people, including city and campus officials, student leaders, and Boulder Police Department (BPD) personnel, went door-to-door in the neighborhoods traditionally most affected by quality of life offenses (known as the Hill) for the purpose of welcoming residents to the community and distributing “party packs.” These packs included tips on hosting parties where no one gets arrested, advising on the importance of having food and non-alcoholic beverages at parties, suggesting that nearby neighbors be informed if a party was being planned, a roll of wrist bands to be used by those who wanted to check party participants’ identification, business card-size notices telling about the signs of alcohol poisoning, and information about how to call for help if non-guests try to crash the party.
• Police also made stops early in the evening if a party appeared to be getting underway. Their purpose was to introduce themselves and to see if the hosts had any questions or needed any help. They also informed the hosts of increased police presence at this time of year.
• The local business district (Hill Alliance) also hosted a welcome back event during this time. The city purchased pizzas for the event so that BPD personnel could distribute slices of pizza during the event. It was hoped that this potential first encounter between students and local police would be positive and have a ripple effect if other encounters occurred.
• UCB negotiated with a local dance club on the Hill to limit its admission so that UCB students were allowed in only after the Hill Alliance event closed down.
• UCB also held numerous events on campus during the first days before the start of the fall semester including Convocation by the Chancellor, an international food fair with live music from around the world (Global Jam), and late night movies and concerts held outdoors if the weather permitted.

Results
It will take at least a few years of vigorous implementation of the FCC ideas to get a full picture of what works and with which audiences. However, early results are encouraging. A few highlights include:

• A reduction in several types of behavior the communities wanted to influence, such as minors in possession of alcohol.
• An expedited processing of cases before the Municipal Court from an average of 21 days between the issuing of a ticket and a person’s appearance in court to six calendar days.
• An increase from approximately 200 cases in a year being referred to the Restorative Justice Program to over 300 in the fall semester alone.
• Many more column inches in the print media about what UCB and the city were doing together to make Boulder a better place to go to school, live, work, and visit.
• A reduction in the number of tickets issued for certain offenses and the number of people required to make court appearances for August 2006 compared to August 2005 (this positive finding was offset somewhat in September because of an additional home football game during this period of time compared to the previous year).
• A greater awareness by the university and the police of the importance each year of when the fall semester begins in relationship to Labor Day and the number of home football games scheduled in any given month.

Continued refinement of the data through analysis of incidents, including when and where they happen, will help the FFC directors identify which audiences should be targeted for special attention during this time of year—for example out-of-state sophomore males living off campus for the first time, specific addresses, certain property owners/managers, areas with a very high density of first time renters, and so on.

Many members of the campus and local community have good feelings about this new effort to focus on a specific period of time in specific geographical areas of the community at the beginning of the fall semester. Early data suggest that the FFC effort might be on to something important. What is certainly clear is that this type of effort is potentially far superior to the previous efforts to periodically send a limited number of broadside messages to 29,000 students who may or may not need to hear these messages and are very unlikely to change their behaviors because of their possible awareness of the messages. The FCC program has the advantage of:

• Identifying which students need to be reached about changing certain specific behaviors that affect the quality of life on and off campus.
• Allowing messages to be more carefully crafted to reach specific audiences and be assessed for their effectiveness in both reaching targeted audiences and having an impact on undesirable behaviors.
• Allowing the very limited UCB and city resources to be focused on a more manageable period of time (first six weekends vs. a school year).
• Helping to identify important stakeholders that could be brought in to the efforts of the program who may have gone unnoticed in the past (e.g., student leaders living in the area, landlords, neighbors, campus/community spokespersons).
• Generating important data collection processes over an extended period of time and accompanying databases that may be used to develop a more objective assessment of the changes taking place over time.