Safety Walk seeks to identify issues

By Allie Blood

Published April 18, 2008

Looking for safety issues on campus, students and MU Police Department officers walked through campus at dusk in the semiannual Missouri Students Association Campus Safety Walk.

Leading the walk were Jordan Paul, the MSA Department of Student Services director, and DSS Campus Safety Chairwoman Megan Sparks. Sparks said the goal of the spring Safety Walk is to look at problems noted in the fall. For example, during the Oct. 9 walk, several blue light emergency phones were not functioning near the Hearnes Center. Since then, they have now been fixed.

MUPD officer Adam Duncan said it takes approximately a month to fix a blue light or phone, depending on what parts need to be ordered.

“MUPD performs monthly checks,” Duncan said.

He said MUPD gets approximately 20 calls a week from the blue lights, with approximately seven to 10 false calls for every actual call. A 2006 Maneater report showed that blue light calls over the month of January 2006 totaled 171, with zero leading to arrests.

Paul said blue lights might not be effective in dangerous situations, but that they are a good deterrent.

“I think we’re a better campus for having them,” Paul said.

While on the walk, Duncan said the southeast corner of the SG-4 parking lot is the darkest corner of the lot. Sparks suggested a small light be added in the corner to make it safer.

The SG-4 parking lot isn’t well-lit because of the neighborhood just south of the trees on the south edge of the lot, which has residents who complain about light bleeding into their neighborhood, Sparks said. Paul said MU has tried turning on all the lights in the SG-4 lot in order to increase safety.

“They got a lot of complaints from the neighborhoods surrounding the Hearnes Center,” Paul said.

When looking at the notes from Tuesday’s walk, Paul said immediate hazards such as overgrown branches or broken lights will have priority.

“Things like a broken valve cover can be fixed now, so we recommend that they be addressed first,” Paul said.

Paul said Campus Facilities could immediately fix most of the issues found on the walk.

“We are really happy with Campus Facilities services,” Paul said. “They’re really proactive and responsive to the issues we bring them.”

Sparks said she joined DSS because she believes blue lights are an important safety feature on campus. Sparks led the walk around the red route, which covered the Hearnes center and the tunnel under Stadium Boulevard.

“This one always has the most problems because it’s the biggest,” Sparks said.

Since 2006, Paul said, the walk participants noticed a lot of maintenance concerns such as overgrown bushes or tree branches. Since then, members of the facilities staff have attended the walk, one on each route, to observe.

“Since then, we’ve seen a reduction in those types of concerns,” Paul said.