The local police do a great job. They have solved many high-profile cases including the most important, the murder of Uri Sellers. Some cases led to convictions, while others, such as last spring’s widely-publicized “racially motivated beating,” were exposed as hoaxes.

The only thing better than solving crimes is to prevent them from happening, and again the local police do a great job. But it turns out that they get help. The help comes from people who make the campus safer by keeping it in order. They also deserve to be recognized.

It is no secret that ISU has a beautiful and well-kept campus. For students like myself, that fact brought us here. While some universities resign themselves to living with graffiti and other signs of decay, ISU has a policy of cleaning vandalism up immediately. Additional work goes into maintaining landscaping, picking up trash and making the university look orderly and clean.

The benefits of this go beyond aesthetics and can be explained by the “broken window theory.” The name comes from the idea that if a broken window in a vacant building is not replaced, soon the other windows will be broken as well, and the neighborhood will look run-down.

This theory was created by criminologist George Kelling and says “the best way to fight serious crime is to fight the disorder that precedes it and weakens a neighborhood — panhandling, graffiti, drunks sleeping on the sidewalk, wrecked cars that remain un-towed and street people taking over public parks.”

New York City is heeding Kelling’s advice, and its once-notorious subway cars are now free of vandalism. Today, trains in New York are not allowed to begin service if they have even one graffiti mark. This, and other efforts to restore signs of order in New York, such as cleaning up and beautifying parks, housing complexes and vacant lots are credited for some of the spectacular drop in violent crimes there. There were 2,245 murders in New York in 1990, but in the past few years, the number of people murdered has dropped to 1000.

More people are realizing that it is a mistake to ignore early signs of community decay. They see that an effective way to reduce the most serious crime is to enforce community standards. When this is not done, the message is that nobody notices or cares when laws are broken, and that no one will be held accountable.

The broken window theory is the opposite of the familiar view that the “root cause” of crime is poverty and, to a lessor extent, racism. While those promoting this failed theory lowered standards and excused even blatant violent acts such as the Los Angeles riots, those supporting the broken window theory raise standards and send the message that crime is unacceptable.

Wishful thinking can’t change the failed track-record of the “root cause” theory. Racism drastically declined in the same decades that violent crime rates rose, making it an odd choice as a major cause of crime. Likewise, fighting poverty with welfare payments is hard to credit with reducing crime for the same reason. In fact, New York’s falling crime rates coincided with starting to force thousands of people on welfare to work.

We should support policies to reduce crime that work, and at ISU, we do. There are many reasons why ISU has a such a low violent crime rate that causes DPS officers to not carry guns; increasing the beauty and order of the university is one of them.

If you get a chance, tell a grounds worker that you appreciate the work they do. Also, take a long look at the tulips blooming on the corner of Osborn and Wallace. They are incredible!

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Benjamin Studenski is a junior in industrial engineering from Hastings, Minn.