Public Safety has removed all safety poles located on campus.
The safety poles allowed students to press a button to notify Public Safety officers of any emergencies on campus rather than calling the Public Safety phone number or using the Rave Guardian app.
Students expressed mixed feelings about the removal of the safety poles.
Vanesa Barger, freshman criminal justice major, said the removal of the poles makes her feel unsafe.
Especially as a female walking by yourself, you never feel safe. If there’s a pole there, you could just press the button, it’s so much easier.”
— Vanesa Barger, freshman criminal justice major
Katelyn Barnett, sophomore accounting major, said the removal of the poles makes alerting Public Safety less convenient.
“I don’t know if I feel less safe, but definitely less convenient if there was something to happen on campus like if I didn’t have service on my phone for Rave Guardian or anything,” Barnett said.
Paityn Sheldon, freshman criminal justice major, said it was weird when she noticed the poles were not around.
“I personally never used them last year, but I still feel like it was nice to have it,” Sheldon said. “It was nice to know that they were there if I needed it. Feel like they might need to do something to replace that instead of just getting rid of it altogether.”
As an alternative to the safety poles, students and faculty can download the free Rave Guardian app for mobile devices or call Public Safety directly. Rave Guardian offers features such as Rave Alerts, the ability to text central dispatch and phone numbers for campus and regional emergency services.
Patrick Adamczyk, sophomore exercise major, said the safety poles probably were not used a lot.
“I guess I get that part, but at the same time, it’d be nice to have some quick way whether or not being on our phones or not, something that’s right there,” Adamczyk said. “I can just hit a button if I need help or something.”
Emily Clinton, freshman criminal justice major, said the removal of the poles is a safety hazard.
“Some classes are at night,” Clinton said. “So maybe something happens when you’re walking to class or from class. There’s nothing you can do other than call the cops or whatever, but I think it’s just as much of a safety hazard without having them on campus.”
Sam Preston, assistant director of Public Safety, said it was a decision to remove the safety poles off campus.
It’s actually a long decision to make, but the campus alarms that we had, were over 25 years old, were not working properly and there were no replacement parts available.” — Sam Preston, assistant director of Public Safety
Preston said Public Safety did their research regarding the safety poles and they did not want people to have a false sense of security.
“To anyone’s recollection, we have not had an emergency, the use of that phone, in probably 15 years,” Preston said. “We don’t want people to have a false sense of security, to look and think of poles there and not be working correctly.”
Preston also said they plan on having cameras to monitor the trails in the future.
“That was a trade that we were looking at in the future as it was the ability to have some video monitoring both at the Broadway Complex and along our trails,” Preston said.
“The product we had was failing and we did not want our campus to have tools that were not working,” Preston said. “We felt like that was in the best interest of everyone to remove them at this time.”
