The blue light system at SVSU is severely lacking, and could one day keep a student, staff or faculty member in a dangerous situation on campus.
The blue light system is the emergency phones that can be seen around campus.
When you pick up these phones, you are routed directly to SVSU or local police. These phones can be useful in emergency situations that may appear on campus, or any other time of danger.
There are also yellow box versions of these in the front of each living center, with large buttons to connect you to police.
However, on SVSU’s campus, these blue lights are few and far between.
I remember first hearing about the blue light system when my orientation leader told us that “you could see a blue light wherever you were on campus.” They were right, you can, but is that good enough to ensure true safety for our campus community?
Our blue lights are far apart and could be hard to get to for many in an emergency due to their distance from each other.
For example, if you are in an emergency in the Curtiss Hall parking lot, J1, the closest blue light phone is near Ming Chuan University. That is far too far to get to if you are in a dangerous situation.
Of course, this is not the only area that is like this, but it is a good example of it. This exact situation could happen on a multitude of different locations on campus, but being able to run from wherever you may be to a different parking lot is unrealistic.
In the rail trail, there isn’t a single blue light in sight. The closest one to the rail trail is in the middle of the commons of Pine Grove. On foot, that’s far to get from within the rail trail if something happens.
It’s important that the people using the trail have sufficient access to resources should an incident happen on their walk or run.
Of course, campus safety is something we don’t want to think the worst of. We don’t want to be spending time and money thinking about new policies and ways to make the campus safer.
Unfortunately, this is something we have to be conscious of daily. Dangerous situations can happen anywhere and anytime, and we should ensure that we’re prepared to handle them, especially on campus.
Having more blue light phones would go the greater distance to ensure safety for students, staff and faculty.
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