As a result of last year’s Student Survey, FUSA and the Department of Public Safety are working together to produce a pamphlet to help strengthen the relationship between students and Public Safety.
The original reason for creating this pamphlet was a trend that FUSA noticed on the surveys, according to senator Ashley Toombs ’07.
“The major concern that was mentioned a number of times…was [the] lack of emergency code blue lights on campus,” she said.
According to Toombs, the results of the survey showed that 641 of the 694 students that responded felt safe to very safe on campus. But there was still a concern about the “blue lights.”
“I realized…that if this is truly a concern of the students then we should distribute a map to them so that they can plan the paths they want to take around campus,” Toombs said.
Toombs met with Assistant Director of Public Safety Frank Ficko to address the issue. Together they decided to create a pamphlet that will explain the role of Public Safety and include a map that points out the 15 “blue lights” on campus.
Julie Cronin ’05, who says she does in fact feel safe on campus, disagrees that a map would be helpful.
“In an emergency you’re not going to pull out your map,” she said.
Cronin believes the problem is that there are not enough “blue lights” on campus.
“Many colleges advertise that anywhere you stand on campus, you can see a blue light. That is definitely not true here. I could name two blue lights and their locations off the top of my head,” Cronin said.
After working with Ficko, Toombs realized there was a lot about the Public Safety department that students do not know about. There are many programs that will be explained in the pamphlet.
The pamphlet will include information on Public Safety Officer training, the bi-annual Women’s Self-Defense course, parking regulations, community service groups and important contact information, according to Toombs.
The Pamphlet will also introduce the new “Student Ride-A-Long” program.
The program “invites all students to ride in the patrol care with an office, in order to learn about their jobs and what they do,” Toombs said.
The pamphlet will still contain a two-page map of the campus’ “blue lights” that Toombs hopes will allow students to plan appropriate routes on campus.
“I believe that this pamphlet is more about trying to improve the relationship between Public Safety and FUSA,” Toombs said.
Public Safety was unable to be reached for comment.
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