| Author | Message | ||
     doublea Supporter Username: Doublea Post Number: 915 Registered: 3-2003 |
No. It wouldn't be less. | ||
| Lizziecat Citizen Username: Lizziecat Post Number: 524 Registered: 5-2003 |
The bottom line is money. Let Seton Hall pay its fair share of town expenses and I'd bet that the negative attitude of the town would improve dramatically. | ||
| cmontyburns Citizen Username: Cmontyburns Post Number: 718 Registered: 12-2003  |
"just a question, how upset would you be if someone in your family was hurt in an accident and the police, fire dept, and rescue squad were all out on assignments at seton hall dealing with false fire alarms and drunk students?" Okay, e_roberts, I'll take you up on this one. How often -- in hours or minutes or days or whatever -- is the entire police, fire department, rescue ssquad on assignment at Seton Hall dealing with false fire alarms and drunk students? | ||
| doublea Supporter Username: Doublea Post Number: 916 Registered: 3-2003 |
Here's a link to Monmouth Univerity's website describing its police force: http://www.monmouth.edu/resources/mupd/chief_message.asp | ||
| e roberts Citizen Username: Wnwd00 Post Number: 324 Registered: 3-2004 |
ok cmonty, im not sure of the exact times in hours but lets talk about it. anytime there is a fire alarm activation in a seton hall building which happens mutiple times per week while students are in university housing the south orange fire force responds with typically its truck, its engine, and a command vehicle, which if you did not know is the manpower of the entire department. a typical fire alarm in a residential dorm on campus will keep SO fire out of service anywhere from 10-25 minutes assuming that the alarm is totally false and caused by steam from a shower head which is one of the more common activations. in addititon to the fire response there is also at least one police officer dispathed to the scene as well taking an officer out of service for several mintutes. as far as medical calls during the day and most nights there is only one ambulance crew on in south orange with other ambualances availible as back up either from within the town or from within. on weeekdays from 6a-6p its a MONOC ambulance and all nights and weekends it is the south orange rescue squad. a typical medical call to south orange that i believe is abuse include seton hall health services using the ambulance as a taxi, seton hall houseing and residence life callng for an ambulance any time a student appears intoxicated and many other similar situations. a medical call that results in a patient being transported to the hospital will take at least 30 mins and often up to an hour in length depending on which hospital the patient goes to and during that time there is no ambulance in south orange and it will take several extra mintues to get another one. in addition the south orange police also respond on all medical calls in the town at all times. so you tell me how you feel about an amblance ferrying drunk seton hall students around and there is not one for your family? or the fire department dealing with a "steam" emergency taking an extra 10 mins to get to your fire emergency? | ||
| cmontyburns Citizen Username: Cmontyburns Post Number: 719 Registered: 12-2003 |
I need more information. -- How many false alarms does the fire department respond to outside seton hall in a given week? They were in my neighborhood twice last week, both for false alarms. (Not implying that's normal -- I don't think I've ever seen them before.) -- You're sayign the fire department is only capable of responding to one call at a time? So if my house is on fire, and the fire department responds, and then your house catches fire, you just have to wait for mine to be put out before anyone will come to help you? -- "So you tell me how you feel about an amblance ferrying drunk seton hall students around and there is not one for your family?" By ferrying around, you mean taking drunk students to run errands? None of those intoxicated students end up going to the hospital? Did any actually require any treatment? And again, you're saying that only one call can be responded to at any one time? | ||
| cmontyburns Citizen Username: Cmontyburns Post Number: 720 Registered: 12-2003 |
...by the way, I would guess that our ambulances respond to alcohol-related situations all the time. I'm not sure that a college student at risk for alcohol poisoning is any less "legitimate" an ambulance call than is responding to the scene of a drunk-driving accident. Also, you didn't say how often this happens. Does this happen multiple times a week too -- the South Orange ambulance responding to calls related to drunk seton hall students? | ||
| Old and Gray Citizen Username: Pastmyprime Post Number: 13 Registered: 2-2005 |
CMonty...now your just arguing for arguments sake...SHU could easily have volunteer EMT's on staff to evaluate a person before an ambulance is summoned, additionally don't they have their own medical service like most colleges? I think they could tell students with minor medical conditions where the hospital is, and assist them to summon a cab, or take them to the bus stop, or come up with an in house solution of transportation for students,( they want to start having volunteers notify off campus fraternity parties of possible police intervention for noise...why not have volunteers to take people to the hospital?)?...Having the police and ambulance respond for things of this nature scare me because I am diabetic and may actually need their response if I forget my pills or my sugar gets out of wack...I assume other towns have to come if our ambulance is not available...how long does that take? | ||
| e roberts Citizen Username: Wnwd00 Post Number: 325 Registered: 3-2004 |
cmonty- i dont have the exact numbers. as for the fire department if they are on an active alarm call they will typically break one piece of equipment once the commanding officer on scene feels reasonable comfortable it is a false alarm until that time you are waiting for maplewood fire to come in for you emergency. as far as the ambulance there are very very very few times when an ambulance will be two different calls at the same time there are patient confidentialility issues among many other legal issues. if there are two patients on the same scene or right near each other in the same building maybe but this is not typical. you see seton hall tends to call an ambulance for someone who appears to be intoxiciated, last time i check being drunk is not a medical emergency. if they are unconscous or something i understand but my impression is that seton hall calls the ambulance because they do not want legal responsibility for a student who may be drunk and do something stupid. so while the south orange resuce squad is delaying with seton hall drunk students to cover seton hall's legal liabilities and you are having chest pain ( a real medical emergency) you are going to wait. | ||
| cmontyburns Citizen Username: Cmontyburns Post Number: 724 Registered: 12-2003 |
I'm just trying to get a sense of how much of this is hypothetical. Yes, it's scary to say that if you're having chest pains, you have to wait while the ambulance makes an unnecessary trip to Seton Hall. Just trying to figure out how often that really happens. Which is what matters more than the possibility, I'd say. | ||
| Old and Gray Citizen Username: Pastmyprime Post Number: 16 Registered: 2-2005 |
I don't think anyone is advocating to stop serving SHU...I think it is to find a method to deter SHU from calling for Emergency Services if an Emegency does not exist...You would assume their Security department would be more hands in weeding out the non emegergencies, on then just calling out for the municipal departments. | ||
| Pizzaz Citizen Username: Pizzaz Post Number: 1559 Registered: 11-2001  |
Let's agree, more security enforcements on campus. Where did BMO go?  | ||
| doublea Supporter Username: Doublea Post Number: 920 Registered: 3-2003 |
Pizzaz - Agreed. I know you're a big SHU supporter, and it's nice to know you can be objective. BMO - Your weblogs were very good and showed a good understanding of South Orange. A lot of the problems that residents have with SHU are more directed at the financial strain SHU places on the community. We could post forever and some people would still be convinced that SHU is worth whatever cost it places on the Village; others would still be convinced of the opposite. I do think that the posters here represent a good broad cross-section of S.O. residents, and for the most part feel that SHU should pick up some more of the costs. At one time, a fee was discussed by the BOT to be paid by each student that would go to South Orange. Maybe this is something that you could pursue. This would go a long way in helping relations between SHU and residents. The contibution which SHU is making to SOPAC is not a substitue for this fee. I get the feeling that some of our BOT members felt that it was more important to get the SOPAC contribution, and just didn't pursue the fee, although we have been advised by at least one BOT member that when the matter of a fee was raised with SHU, the BOT was told to just forget about it. These matters are the same as discussed in college towns throughout the U.S. Perhaps it's felt more in SO because of the incredibly high property taxes. | ||
| doublea Supporter Username: Doublea Post Number: 921 Registered: 3-2003 |
BMO - By the way, a lot of the increase in property taxes is due to raises negotiated with police officers and firefighters, the costs of which SHU doesn't contribute to. (This is not meant to be critical of the police or firefighters. South Orange is lucky to have you.) | ||
| mrosner Citizen Username: Mrosner Post Number: 1746 Registered: 4-2002 |
BMO might be on vacation this week. | ||
| Taylor M Citizen Username: Anotherusername Post Number: 338 Registered: 8-2004 |
e roberts- You're starting to scare me! I can't for a minute believe the fire dept will break a piece of equipment on purpose. That's a serious accusation! Maybe in the future if the squad is called to SHU because a student is drunk, the police should also respond. If the student is under age, they should be arrested for under age drinking. If that happens a few times the students would hopefully think twice about drinking. SHU should also take action against drunken students! | ||
| SoOrLady Citizen Username: Soorlady Post Number: 1818 Registered: 9-2003 |
Taylor - I believe the term "break" meant that the person in charge allows a truck to return to the fire house when it is determined that there is not emergency. | ||
| BMO Citizen Username: Bmo Post Number: 14 Registered: 2-2005 |
Hey everyone. I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while - my computer has been screwed up for the past few days and I haven't been able to get online since Saturday. Well if nothing else this thread has gotten the debate started and out in the open - which is excellent. Nothing can be done to solve a problem or to bring about change until there is an open dialogue. About the public safety issue: Someone brought up to us a few weeks ago the idea of SHU having it's own EMS Squad. Personally I like the idea, but apparently an ambulance is not in the fiscal cards any time in the near future. What we can look into instead is creating a first-responder squad of student EMTs who can be the first ones on the scene and determine if a real emergency exists before sending out an ambulance. I think we should definitely look into this option. As far as transporting intoxicated people to the hospital, I believe - and anyone can correct me if I am wrong - but I believe it is the law that an intoxicated person must be transported to the hospital (trying to remember back to EMT training class). I really think that it is a small, small minority of students who do go off campus on the weekends to party - but as someone posted earlier - if it is your window they're outside of at 2am it doesn't really matter if it is 2 people or 10,000. I think though in this respect that instead of focusing on how many people party on the weekends, we should focus on what we can do to get these people out of the neighborhoods and into the downtown area. It used to be that the student body was almost all locally-based, but now a large portion are from out of state and out of the country - so they must stay in town on the weekends - and many of the local students are staying on campus on the weekends as a result to stay with their friends. If there were a 24 hour diner, someplace like a TGI Friday's or Applebee's that would be open late on the weekends, there's a great possibility that these students would be hanging out there rather than in neighborhood houses. When the DRMC (is that the correct acronym?) eventually comes about - I think there should definitely be some student representation on there and we should bring some of these ideas to that committee. | ||
| BMO Citizen Username: Bmo Post Number: 15 Registered: 2-2005 |
Also in response to some posts - yes students have had to appear in court for their "off campus behavior". And when a student is found to be intoxicated - they have to go through Seton Hall's judicial process which for this particular offense I believe requires enrollment in a program similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. | ||
| D. Moderator Username: Dave Post Number: 5432 Registered: 4-1998  |
Speaking of legalities, I bet SHU could reap a whole ton of positive warm & cuddly feelings from the community if they would help save this very online community from collapsing under the weight of a frivolous lawsuit. I hear SHU even has a Law School and it has a Center for Social Justice. http://law.shu.edu/csj/ Dave Ross SHU '88 & SO resident 973.378.9135 |
