BY MARTHA MARRAZZA

In print | Published November 17, 2005

Adam Wallwork ’07 received a DUI citation on the morning of Nov. 5 after crashing his car into the SEPTA bridge on Fieldhouse Lane.

Public safety officers discovered the accident while patrolling campus. There were no passengers, and no one was injured in the crash. Neither the bridge nor the car incurred significant damages. Swarthmore borough police were called at approximately 5 a.m., and they determined that the incident was alcohol-related and that the student driver was underage.

Director of Public Safety Owen Redgrave said public safety officers worked with police to handle the incident. “One of my officers on patrol came across the car. The operator was out of the car,” he said. “The Swarthmore borough police were summoned and their officer subsequently determined that the operator had been drinking and was under 21.”

The sound of the crash attracted attention from dorms in the vicinity, Redgrave said. “There were two other people there [at the scene of the accident],” he said. “They stated they had heard the crash from a nearby dorm and had come to investigate.”

Borough police officers said the incident did not prove different from other reports of alcohol-related car accidents to which they have responded. “It didn’t really stick out from other DUI cases. The driver apparently hit the bridge overpass on Fieldhouse Lane,” Chief Brian Craig said. “I don’t recall anything unusual about the incident.”

Redgrave, however, noted that DUI cases rarely occur at Swarthmore. “On campus, DUI arrests typically happen much less than once per year I’d say, maybe even once every two or three years,” he said.

Administrators consider DUI cases to be an affront to the Swarthmore community as a whole, Associate Dean for Student Life Myrt Westphal said.

“When someone does a DUI on campus, we consider it a very serious offense against the community,” she said. “In the process, we figure out what penalties will be carried out. We might put a student on probation. It depends on the level of the offense.”

Penalties resulting from police involvement in the case could vary based on court decisions, Craig said. “We put the individual into the court process and the penalties are determined at court. The rules change for those under 21. The normal acceptable blood alcohol content goes down to .02,” he said. “The penalties of a DUI depend on the court processes. If it’s a first offense then they have to go to a [rehabilitation] program. If it’s a second offense, then I have no idea.”

Wallwork declined to comment on the accident but communicated the sensitivity of the matter as a pending legal matter. “It is no one’s business outside of my own and my close circle of friends,” he said. “There was no damage, and there weren’t any injuries.”

« RETURN TO NEWS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »