Late-night walk shines light on safety issues on campus

Students, administrators, police inspect campus for safety.

By Krissy Tripp

Published April 23, 2009

Students and administrators took a walk together Tuesday night to help make MU a safer campus.

Four teams walked around the campus looking for hazards and unsafe conditions. The event is organized by the Missouri Students Association Department of Student Services.

"It's fairly simple to set up the event," Director of Student Services Ryan Senciboy said. "The challenging part is ensuring that the hazards are rectified."

Senciboy said MSA is looking into the logistics of a campus-wide safety assessment, but students can also use the megaphone feature on the MSA Web site to submit any problems they find.

MSA President Jordan Paul said the event is important because there isn't any similar event to check for campus safety.

"A lot of administrators aren't here at night, so it's good for them to come out and see what it looks like," Paul said.

Residential Life supervisor Mike Buschman said taking the walk in the dark helps because the campus looks different at night than it does during the day, which is when most administrators are on campus.

"During safety walks, you can get more than one perspective because of the group of students you have," Buschman said.

MU Police Department Chief Jack Watring attended as well.

"We're just trying to support the student groups," he said. "Sometimes during the daytime things don't look the same as they do after dark."

MU police made themselves available for questions or concerns and checked for any safety issues, Watring said.

Residential Life employees attending the walk to look for lighting, uneven steps, access ramps, camera placement and emergency phones.

"If I can't see phones from a distance, there's a problem," Buschman said.

Both student leaders and administrators took notes on what was found along their route. Every year, MSA combines all notes taken by MSA leaders to issue a full report, while most faculty members begin fixing what they find along their routes right away.

Buschman said Residential Life tries to solve problems with lighting, emergency phones and cameras within 24 to 48 hours, but problems that require more planning and good weather such as uneven steps or crumbled sidewalks could take weeks.

"Generally, they fix things," Paul said. "Usually by the time we issue the report, the problems have been taken care of."

Paul said he can't think of any glaring problems that were never fixed after the full report was issued, but some problems are expensive and can't be fixed immediately due to cost. Expensive safety fixtures such as crosswalks can be brought up to funding sources such as the Student Fee Capital Improvement Committee.

Paul said student turnout overall was higher than previous semesters, and for the first time in years, the Residence Halls Association attended and co-sponsored the event as well.

"To the best of my understanding, it used to be frequented by RHA," President Robert Wood said.

Wood said past RHA leaders felt MSA had more influence regarding the safety issues that came up during the walk, since many of them weren't directly related to the residence halls. Wood said he wanted to recommence RHA's involvement in the walk because he is very concerned about the safety of students.