Staying safe

Off-campus safety needs improvement

While the fact that the number of violent crimes committed on campus last year dropped is a credit to the combined efforts of Department of Public Safety, the Ann Arbor Police Department, the city of Ann Arbor and the University, members of the University community should not take this as a cue to relax crime prevention and safety awareness efforts.

Last year, although DPS received only 10 reports of a forcible sexual offenses, the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center received reports of 67 instances of sexual assault. According to the FBI's uniform crime reports for colleges and universities (http://www.soconline.org/information/crimestats/UCR), there were 22 violent crimes committed at the University - the same number as those committed at Michigan State, which has an enrollment of approximately six thousand more students. At the University of Wisconsin, a school with almost the same enrollment and a campus environment similar to that of Ann Arbor, 14 violent crimes were reported. In terms of crime prevention and general safety, there is always room for improvement.

According to DPS (http:// www.umich.edu/~safety/), the department "is charged with providing law enforcement and security services to a campus that includes more than 220 buildings on 4.2 square miles." Ensuring the safety of a community comprised of approximately 22,000 faculty and staff members and 37,000 students - 11,000 of whom live in residence halls - is a formidable job and therefore the statistics are impressive. DPS offers programs on campus that include crime prevention presentations, building security audits and the distribution of brochures and other literature.The Community Oriented Policing program, developed in 1995, has divided the campus into six "beats," each of which is patrolled by an assigned officer. There are also five neighborhood offices located at various spots on Central and North Campus.

Still, safety remains an important concern for the 26,000 students not living in residence halls on campus. Many of the residential neighborhoods and streets surrounding the University are not only extremely dark, but also far out of the way of the security services that DPS offers. Although there are more than 70 "blue light" phones located on campus, legally the University has neither the responsibility nor the authority to implement such safety measures off of campus. Members of the University and the city of Ann Arbor should work together to not only continue crime prevention on campus, but to develop a broader program to meet the needs of off campus students. The safety of University students who live off campus should be doubly protected, in that the responsibility should fall to both the University which the students attend and the city in which they reside.

However, safety should not only be left to DPS and the Police Department. It is important that students take the initiative to protect their peers and get involved programs such as Safewalk and Northwalk. These programs allow a team of two trained student volunteers to escort anyone anywhere (off campus included) within a 20 minute radius of the UGLi (Safewalk) or Bursley Hall (Northwalk). The task of increasing safety should not be left solely to those who are paid to do it. As members of the community, it is the responsibility of students to become active in contributing to an environment that is safe and comfortable for everyone.