Sen. Neal Hunt (R-NC) of the North Carolina General Assembly introduced a bill May 26 that would require fingerprinting and national and state criminal background checks for all undergraduate students wanting to enroll in any of the 16 North Carolina Universities. If passed, the bill would take effect in the fall of 2007.
The proposal was motivated by the slayings at UNC-Wilmington in 2004, when two female students were killed in separate incidents by students with criminal backgrounds the University was not aware of. The purpose of the bill, Hunt said, is to make sure there are no violent criminals enrolled in the UNC system without the knowledge of the school administration.
“It will keep violent offenders from being admitted to our schools, being neighbors with our sons and daughters without the knowledge of the school administration,” he said.
The suspects in the separate UNC-W cases concealed their criminal history when they applied for admission, something Hunt said can be prevented through background checks. He said it is up to the administration to decide if a student will be admitted to the University if the check reveals past criminal behavior.
“If they want to allow somebody to come in, that’s their prerogative,” he said. “We want to make sure they at least know about it.”
Student Body President Will Quick said the bill is a bad idea for two reasons:
“One, it’s ridiculous to require all incoming students to be fingerprinted. Generally fingerprints are reserved for people…who commit some kind of crime,” he said. “Second, it’s bad monetarily — it would cost a lot for the University system to do that.”
Quick, who is working for Democrat David Weinstein, said Hunt originally proposed the idea as an amendment to the Senate budget last Wednesday and it was rejected. The bill has since been forwarded to the Senate Finance Committee where Quick says it will stop.
“Senator Hunt’s the main sponsor, but all three of the sponsors are Republican and I think that it’s kind of a power play right now,” Quick said. “It’s not going to get out of the Senate Finance Committee; it’ll die there.”
Some students feel the bill, if passed, will not help prevent crimes on campuses.
“I don’t think that having this will help much,” Andrew Krupp, senior in microbiology, said. “One cannot predict who will go about and do something like that or even commit a crime.”
Other students feel the background checks won’t cut down on crime because the Universities are public campuses and anyone, including criminals, can be on campus. Hunt, however, disagrees.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “If somebody’s living on the campus, they’re obviously going to have more opportunity available to commit a crime as opposed to just wandering through the campus.”
Erin Hagwood, a rising freshman at Appalachian State University, said background checks could have a positive influence.
“You should be able to trust them but if you’re still a little wary about it then I think it’d be okay,” she said. “The college needs to know about criminal backgrounds. Like if they do have something, even if it is minor, so they know what to keep an eye out for when a student comes.”
Hagwood said that fingerprinting, however, might be a little too much. Hunt said it may not be necessary to fingerprint applicants, and that it’s only necessary if the administration suspects the applicant is not who he claims to be.
The additional cost for the background checks would come from applicants, Hunt said, adding that it’s not expensive. Applicants would be able to have fingerprints taken at any sheriff’s office or local law enforcement agency with the necessary equipment where they would then be forwarded to the State Bureau of Investigation, the bill said.
The criminal record check would be provided by the Department of Justice and all information would be kept confidential under Chapter 132 of the General Statutes.
Sgt. Jon Barnwell of Campus Police said that criminal background checks won’t catch every offender.
“You could have committed a crime and not gotten caught so you don’t have a criminal record,” he said. “Second, some people decide to commit the crime after they’re already in college and not before.”
Barnwell noted incidents in February in which two students, James Darnell Lyons and Timothy O’Brian Williams, went on a crime spree, robbing seven students and a man with a handgun. One of them, Barnwell said, had a past criminal record.
“The armed robberies and car-jacking incidents in and around campus should go to show you that background checks is not a complete catch all,” he said.
Jessica Learish, senior at Athens Drive High School, said she doesn’t see anything wrong with the bill.
“Considering that all university applicants are supposed to include all of that type of information in the first place, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal,” she said.
Jessica Lee Faulkner, one of the women killed at UNC-W, was from Cary and was 18 when kidnapped, raped and strangled by student Curtis Dixon on May 5, 2004. Dixon was previously at two other UNC campuses — UNC-Charlotte and North Carolina School of the Arts — but left because of poor grades and behavioral problems, including fighting and stalking a female student. Dixon committed suicide while in police custody.
Barnwell said background checks may not deter crime in the sense that repeat offenders are as common as first-time offenders.
“We do have a fair share of repeat offenders, but on that same token we have first-time offenders on a regular basis as well,” he said. “So you can’t say that a person that has committed a crime is going to keep committing a crime, although there are a certain percentage that do.”
Quick said the bill won’t pass because of what it would mean for the University system.
“It wasn’t a very popular amendment when it was proposed on the floor. It’s not a very popular thing now,” he said, “Mainly because it costs a lot. But it does give the wrong perception of the University system and University students.”
