The San Diego State Police Department never fails to deliver crime alerts every year, and most often these crimes involve petty theft and break-in alerts.

Why does a four-year university have so much crime just within its campus walls? It’s not enough to simply report these crimes after the fact.

SDSU needs to start looking into closing off easy access points on campus during evening hours.

School shouldn’t be completely closed off, but it’s not a far-fetched idea to have certain areas of campus access closed off to ensure students are not at risk of encountering a group of burglars.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, SDSU had 31 on-campus student housing burglaries in 2014, an increase since 2012.

USC has already implemented similar types of changes and SDSU should consider following suit.

USC will be installing chain-linked fences and security cameras and will deny anybody who is a non-resident access to campus after hours (between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.) come winter break.

Only a few entrances will be open after hours and can only be accessed by faculty and students upon identification, according to NBC Los Angeles. The school will also be implementing guest registration where students must register any non-students for them to be allowed on campus.

It sounds tedious, but is it that bad of an option if SDSU were to adapt these security measures?

This will allow faculty and security to keep track of who is on campus and this may potentially decrease the amount of unwanted guests.

USC may be a private school and funding an operation like this is probably easier, but students at SDSU are no less important than those at USC and deserve a safer campus. I applaud the campus for at least having escorts, but what good are they during sudden encounters?

According to NeighborhoodScout, La Mesa scores a 16 on the Crime Index, with 100 being the safest. SDSU is located in La Mesa.

This is not to say that SDSU is in a completely inhabitable area, but it does suggest that beefing up security wouldn’t be such a bad idea. SDSU is a beautiful campus and students should feel free to roam during the day or night.

Closing off the entire campus may be a bit daunting, but denying access from key points of entry on campus could be the ticket to decreasing the amount of crime on campus.

Read Staff Columnist Jimmy Janszen’s column on why the campus should not be closed.