Dear Clarion Editor:
The Nelson Hall Residence Life staff has some concerns with your April 29 article titled “Nelson ills mount.” We feel that this article expresses some information that is unresearched and poorly written.
Our first concern rests in the wording of the article. The first sentence of the article reads, “Nelson is a dangerous place to live.” We regret to inform you, but Nelson Hall is one of the safest residence halls in Colorado; card swipes in the elevators, electronic key cards and key-only access doors add a dimension of resident safety that is unparalleled. Not only is Nelson the safest residence hall at DU, it is quite possibly the safest, most secure building on this campus. A “dangerous place to live” represents a location of high crime and other detrimental elements, which seriously jeopardize the safety, health and overall well-being of a human being. I’m sorry, but a “dangerous place to live” is not Nelson Hall.
We are actually quite surprised that the line was published. Any media body, such as the Clarion, should have the resources to research other campuses and the crime rates at their dormitories. If this research had been done, one would realize the un-paralleled safety that Nelson and the University of Denver Residence Hall system offers. In fact, most people living in the system, and especially Nelson, would agree that DU offers a safe and comfortable atmosphere and is not “a dangerous place to live.”
In regard to your article wording, the caption to your title article does not reflect the information presented in your article. Your caption reads, “…acid drips plague Nelson Hall’s parking garage.” However, in your article, you quote Mark Rogers as saying, “leached out some of the calcium…creating the liquid that has damaged the vehicles.” Unless the Clarion writers have some analytical chemistry talents, how does a Calcium and water mixture turn into an “acid” that is eating away at car paint, and even better, how can your organization allow such a false, misleading caption on the front page! As far as we know, the stain can be removed safely, but not by car washes. Most people may cause damage to their own cars by improperly trying to clean off the stain.
As mentioned earlier, information listed in the article is grossly unresearched. The camera system in Nelson is adequate and properly working. In fact, many of the vandalism acts done in the garage are caught on tape. We have positively identified some individuals who are now going through the disciplinary process. As with most cameras, it is sometimes hard to identify perpetrators; this is the same with many convenience stores and businesses, and Nelson is just the same. Your article made it sound like no security in Nelson were working and that people were constantly “having their way” with vandalism. This is completely untrue and unresearched.
Trained individuals, such as Residence Life members and Campus Safety are doing their best to utilize working equipment so that perpetrators will be caught. Adequate research by your organization would show that university officials are doing their best to catch problem makers with the working equipment that they have.
Our final concern with your research rests in your sources of information. Ty Mills and Mark Rogers are excellent resources for information. However, if you are going to write an article about residence halls, it might be nice to interview resident assistants, resident directors, graduate resident directors, or the Department of Residence central staff members. Contacting us would have provided your organization with more accurate information about your article, which you could have portrayed to your readers, and thus, have become a more credible source of accurate information.
Although we have some concerns with your article, you did clear up some unfounded rumors about “the phantom sinking” and the “numerous wall re-paintings,” and we at the Department of Residence appreciate this. However, the aforementioned concerns that we expressed are real, and we hope that you will talk these concerns over with your organization, so that this type of mishap does not happen again. We are afraid that if the mishaps continue to occur, the journalism style and credibility of your newspaper may be in question.
Sincerely,
Nelson Hall Residence Life Staff
