COLLEGE PARK - Knox Road looks like any other small-city street, with a bank branch, a few businesses and tidy homes. But in the eyes of the University of Maryland, it might as well be the Berlin Wall, so clear a boundary does it represent.

To the north lies the university campus, including the main clusters of fraternity and sorority houses. This area is under the close watch of the campus police and under the strict rules of the administration - parties there must be registered in advance, adhere to capped guest lists, offer beer cans instead of bottles and use bouncers to check IDs.

It's a different scene just across Knox Road and east of Princeton Avenue in a neighborhood called Old Town. Here, in a residential area dominated by students, relative anarchy reigns: There are no guest lists, no bouncers and the police show up at parties only if festivities are way out of control. Here, bags overflowing with beer and malt liquor bottles line the streets Mondays awaiting pickup.

And here, a 20-year-old sophomore from Baltimore County was fatally stabbed last weekend after a group of nonstudents came looking to score some free beer and, students say, to cause some trouble with college kids.

The death of Brandon Malstrom shocked the state's flagship public university and confirmed student fears about crime on and around the College Park campus. At the same time, it has forced the university to confront the inconsistency in its approach to public safety - an approach shared by other colleges with many students living off-campus.

While the university has stepped up police patrols and alcohol enforcement on campus since the substance-related deaths of two students last year, it has not reckoned fully with one of the consequences: Partying has been pushed to the off-campus fringes where about 5,000 students live.

These neighborhoods are the jurisdiction of the Prince George's County police, who are too busy with serious crimes (123 homicides this year) to provide the blanket coverage that the campus gets from university police. As a result, these areas - full of nice cars, cash-laden students and free alcohol - are seen as easy pickings by interlopers like those who showed up at last week's party.

"It's a crazy scene, and unfortunately creates the potential for the kind of attack that occurred to Mr. Malstrom," said Stephanie Stullich, president of the Old Town Civic Association, who said there has been more partying in the area this fall than ever. "People come to the neighborhood looking for action. There's just kind of a wild environment that invites people who are up to no good to go in and cause trouble."

University officials were slow to respond to this reality - the first day after the stabbing, an administrator directed all questions about public safety in the neighborhood to the county police, saying that the university "does not have responsibility" over the area.

The next day, the message shifted. President C.D. Mote Jr. said the university needs a new approach to off-campus areas. He met with incoming County Executive Jack Johnson to discuss ways to improve the current arrangement, under which campus police can patrol off campus but county police receive all citizen calls in the area and handle all major crimes.

Even with the new resolve, finding a solution won't be easy. Expanding campus police coverage off campus will mean expanding the budget of the 75-officer force at a time of fiscal constraints. Logistical questions also arise about increasing campus police powers in an area that, however full of students, is not university property and still home to some nonstudents.

Most important, extending the university's reach off campus would mean a fundamental change in administration philosophy. Until now, the university, like many others, has been reluctant to take on the burden of broadening its in loco parentis role to include off-campus students, because of both the costs and potential liabilities involved.

Already, a lot of work goes into providing alcohol and drug enforcement, not to mention residential advisers and other services, to 10,000 on-campus students. Why pay to expand the umbrella over off-campus students, some of whom left campus for lack of space, but many of whom left because they would rather live out of the gaze of school officials?

That's the other complication in ramping up the university's presence in city neighborhoods: Many off-campus students are opposed to it. Sure, they would like there to be fewer break-ins and muggings. But they don't necessarily want police prowling around to check for alcohol violations, even if that makes the area less appealing to nonstudent trouble-seekers.

"I'm 20, and I like to drink, and I don't want to worry about people telling me I can't do that," said Joseph Serrano of Wheaton, a junior who pays $560 a month to share a small house with four classmates. "Here, I don't have to worry about the person who looks around the dorm, the monitors, or whatever they're called."

The city of College Park learned firsthand last year how little off-campus students care for close oversight when its new noise-complaint officer, hired to respond to calls about rowdy students, was attacked when he tried to write a citation at a party, said Stullich. To avoid such conflicts, she said, the officer is instructed to record noise levels outside offending parties and mail the citations.

The city of about 8,000 nonstudents is considering creating a police force, an idea previously rejected by voters.

Residents do their best to tolerate the student parties. John Kohl, who lives next to the home where the stabbing occurred, said he's called the police only six times in his 25 years in the neighborhood.

Some students suggest another solution: The university could let up slightly on its strict on-campus drinking enforcement, which this year has resulted in a record 600 citations. That way, more partying would happen in campus buildings harder for nonstudents to penetrate, and under the control of university officials who could strive to moderate it - much in the way that some parents allow their children to drink at home to keep them from getting into trouble elsewhere.

"This is college, and there are going to be parties," said Del Schmidt of Baltimore, a senior.

Mote didn't broach that possibility last week, though he recognized that the crackdown on campus drinking might have a downside.

"Unintended consequences are always there," he said. "It's very hard to deal with that. You push one balloon down and another pops up. It's hard to keep them all down."