By Taylor Paraboschi

With the start of a new semester and the appearance of the new University Senate smoking ban, Public Safety will be playing their part to enforce the new rule, as well as the pre-existing ones.

“Our job is to warn everyone [about the smoking ban], and to encourage people to abide by the new rule,” said Edward Bracht, Director of Public Safety.

“We sent out an e-mail alerting people about the new smoking ban,” he continued, adding that students need to be educated about the ban ahead of time in order for it to be fully effective. “We will continually reinforce the ban throughout the rest of the semester,” said Bracht.

Aside from the new smoking ban there have been no recent changes made to school policies. “Policies are created by the Dean of Students, and so far there have been no changes made to existing policies,” Bracht said, adding that Public Safety doesn’t create the policies, but rather “enforces the rules and regulations as they see violations occurring.”

When asked what specific things Public Safety would be cracking down on this semester, he replied that there wasn’t one main thing that they were looking out for. “There is no specific thing that we are cracking down on this semester,” said Bracht. “However, we have increased the number of public safety officers on bike patrol, as well as adding more undercover parking patrols in the campus parking lots.”

As for recent trends in violations that Public Safety has found, Bracht replied that there have been an increase in the amount of theft related crimes committed by other students. “We [public safety] have found that there are more car break-ins and student thefts that are being committed by other students, as opposed to outsiders.”

“We [public safety] are always trying to minimize crimes against students,” said Bracht when asked what his overall goal for this semester was. “We want to make the University environment safe for students to pursue their educational goals.”