The Muncie Police Department promised to continue its crackdown on illegal alcohol use near campus when school begins in the fall.
Students who were here in the spring certainly weren't spared from it, but police are not watching summer students as closely.
Muncie Police Chief Joe Winkle said the need doesn't exist to continue the crackdown right now. He says there is a different culture at Ball State during the summer months. The students are here, but the flocks of underage drinkers aren't roaming the neighborhoods nearby.
"That's kind of where all of this instigated from," Winkle said.
As Winkle predicted, Muncie Police officials said they received no major calls from the neighborhoods around Ball State this weekend.
The difference is part of a culture change that most universities experience in the summertime. Student shenanigans don't attract the same kind of police attention that those during the regular school year do, mostly because there aren't many. There are students still taking classes, and a few even live on campus. However, enrollment is cut to about a third. Student leadership has dispersed. Fraternity houses close. There is little left to do except go to school, and school has become more intense.
"Suddenly, there are far fewer students on campus," Kay Bales, associate vice president for Student Affairs, said. "You can look at the stadium parking lot. There is a dramatic difference."
Students who are here during the summer are expected to do all of the same reading and cover the same material that students do during the regular academic year, which lasts about four months, but the work is condensed into five weeks. Because of this, former Provost Warren Vander Hill said students have to spend more time focusing on classes.
"The way the courses are taught demands that," Vander Hill said. "Everything is entirely concentrated into two periods of time that are very accelerated."
Dean of Students Randy Hyman said the atmosphere at Ball State is similar to most universities, where many students leave for the summer, incoming students constantly visit for orientation, and other groups stop by to attend conferences and workshops.
"The differences that we observe here would be observable on those other campuses too," Hyman said.
But there are things other universities offer during the summer that Ball State cannot. Some college campuses are known as "destination campuses" during the summer. These are schools where students will go to take a few classes but enjoy a different climate at the same time. At colleges like the University of Colorado, students can attend class in the morning and hike or kayak in the mountains in the afternoon.
"They can do a whole bunch of outdoorsy kinds of things," Vander Hill said.
Ball State loses students to destination campuses. It also loses students to universities that are closer to their homes. Often, students will live at home, work and take a class at a nearby university.
"Very large numbers of them would go home and take classes at IUPUI," Vander Hill said.
Often when students come to school during the summer at Ball State, it is simply because the summer is an additional educational opportunity.
"It's an opportunity for students to take additional classes or to take a required course so they are able to graduate in the timetable that they've established," Bales said.
Although the Muncie Police is aware of all of this, it doesn't mean they aren't listening for complaints about problem parties.
"We still occasionally will have one," Winkle said. "There's more smaller parties."
But once school begins, Winkle has promised to do much more than listen.
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