The blue light system (pictured above) may be replaced with an app in the upcoming months. Geneseo’s University Police Department should retain the system and focus on improving Geneseo’s current security measures (David Maiolo/Creative commons).
Last year, a religious group was rumored to have aggressively attempted to recruit students on campus. At least one of these alleged incidents occurred in an academic building where a student was approached around 9 p.m. in the Integrated Science Center. Either way, non-students can access academic buildings as late as students can.
This fact is extremely problematic in that students should feel safe in academic buildings when they’re studying at night. Thus, our campus must improve its security, especially in the academic buildings.
Past a certain time in the early evening, academic buildings—besides the library—should be open to only students by use of their identification card. Almost all academic buildings already have these swipe card readers, so it would not be too difficult to implement this change.
The library should continue to stay open publicly, considering the entire community uses it as a resource, but there is no need for the public to be in any other academic building at night. If there is a need, non-students could schedule an appointment for a specific building and the college could supply a temporary swipe card.
In 2015, colleges across the country experienced 27,500 “criminal incidents against persons and property on campus” according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Crime is an issue on college campuses that should be acknowledged and addressed. While we have the University Police Department on our campus for security, they are rarely seen at the top of the hill by academic buildings where these incidents of harassment occurred.
It would be beneficial if University Police Department was present near the academic buildings at night instead of on lower campus where the dorms and parking lots are.
Students have also circulated a rumor that the college is in the process of removing the blue light system on campus. This is reportedly due to the push for students to use the RaveGuardian app. If this is true, it would be a decrease for the security of students on our campus.
The blue light system is valuable throughout in that it is a very visible security measure. People will be less likely to assault someone if they are standing near a large, blue-lit panic button.
They are valuable in the case of someone’s phone is dead and they are unable to access an app such as RaveGuardian. Thus, the blue light system is a security measure worth keeping on our campus.
Another issue is the RaveGuardian app itself. Students have experienced difficulties with understanding the app and some of its features. These issues are understandable as it is a new program.
The college should maintain the blue light system especially since the alternative option might not effectively keep students safe. The college should also provide more updates on the fixing of problems with the RaveGuardian app so students feel safe using it.
Luckily, there is an alternative app called Noonlight which costs about $3 monthly but is very effective as a panic button system. It tracks the cause of panic and sends that and someone’s location to emergency care providers. It can also be linked to other apps and devices to send health and physical appearance information, as well as providing home security.
It may be beneficial for the school to look into implementing an app like Noonlight which is already established and past its phase of bugs, instead of using an app essentially in its beta phases.
The security of our campus is worrisome, especially when it seems administration is removing security instead of adding it.