Greek Safety Walk canceled due to lack of progress

There have not been many improvements on the issues brought up last spring.

By Katherine Miller

Published Dec. 9, 2008

The Greek Safety Walk, originally planned for the week before Thanksgiving, was cancelled this fall due to a lack of progress on the spring initiatives.

The Greek Safety Walk, part of the Campus Safety Walk, is a Missouri Students Association initiative designed to spot potential problems that could be a hazard to students, such as tree limbs that are too close to power lines or streets in need of repair.

"They found some pretty substantial things in regard to safety when they went on the walk," Interfraternity Council President Bryan VanGronigen said. "I don't know if it needed to be conducted every semester, but in my opinion, at least once a year would be very beneficial for our campus to know, for our community to know and for law enforcement and the city to know if there's any safety concerns in the area."

The results from last year's walk were compiled by former MSA President Jim Kelley with the help of Director of Student Services and MSA President-elect Jordan Paul, who then sent those concerns to First Ward City Councilman Paul Sturtz.

"As far as I know, we haven't heard anything from Sturtz yet," VanGronigen said. "For the fall, they didn't do another one because they were going to continue to try to contact Sturtz's office with comments from last semester. There was no sense to conduct the walk when there was no action taken by the city on the previous results."

Sturtz said that though he has not brought up the Safety Walk initiatives to the council yet, it could be something that the city follows up with in the future.

"With anything at the city, there needs to be some follow-up from all sides," Sturtz said.

Sturtz said the city's tight budget prevented the issue from being on top of the agenda.

Greektown isn't considered part of the MU campus and is under the control of the City of Columbia for emergency responses or police jurisdiction, since all of the properties there are private residences.

"It's a gray area because the university has some influence in the area, but then again it's City of Columbia streets," said Sam Hargadine, the Interfraternity Council vice president of public relations.

Hargadine said a lack of student voice on the City Council is also a problem.

"Students are so underrepresented by the City Council just because we don't live there full-time, and typically they're not the ones voting for the Council," Hargadine said. "It's kind of an electorate that doesn't get much attention."

Although Residential Life and the MU Police Department have no responsibilities to Greektown, both said they would be interested in helping promote the area's safety.

"Because it's technically off-campus housing, the university doesn't have any jurisdiction or responsibilities, but we do recognize that those are our students," Residential Life Director Frankie Minor said.

Minor said safety is a big concern, but it's easy to become complacent.

Capt. Brian Weimer said MUPD, which did not attend the Greek Safety Walk last year, is looking for ways to make MU a safer environment, but they do have more limitations.

"We've tried when at all possible to do anything we can for campus safety," Weimer said. "However, we mainly need to focus on our primary area of control to offer the services here, so we're not interfering with other police departments."

Although the safety walk didn't produce as many positive results as MSA originally hoped last spring, Paul said he hopes to continue the initiative.

"That's one of the things we ran on, was holding the city accountable," Paul said. "We'll continue to have those discussions and those talks and, hopefully, this spring we'll be able to have a Greek Safety Walk, and we'll see some improvements."