'Night Walk' explores IU's safety

Walking from the Jordan Avenue parking lot to Eigenmann to Willkie Quad and then back again, a group of students, administrators and employees braved the brisk December air for nearly an hour and-a-half Tuesday night.\nThey left with red noses, frozen hands and a sense of satisfaction that they had made the campus a safer place for everyone.\nThe Commission on Personal Safety led its bi-annual Night Walk Tuesday night in order to ensure the safety of all students, faculty and staff. The Night Walk is designed to ensure that all designated walkways and parking lots are well lit and to raise awareness about overall campus safety.\n"(The Night Walk) is a regularly sponsored event by the IUB Commission on Personal Safety that provides an opportunity for students on campus who are concerned about safety issues to actively participate in assessing campus facilities," said Carol McCord, the Assistant Dean for Women's Affairs.\nThe CPS has regularly conducted night walks since it was created 15 years ago. The Commission on Personal Safety was originally established in 1987 in order to address women's safety on campus. The committee has grown to include pedestrian and bicycle safety, sexual assault prevention, coordination with other campus safety units, lighting and facilities. \n"Commission on Personal Safety holds night walks twice every year," said Jean Robinson, Dean of Women's Affairs and co-chair of the CPS. "Students, members of the CPS Executive Committee, and IUB staff people who work on lighting, parking operations, and other facilities join us."\nRobinson highly recommends that anyone with safety concerns attend the walk. \n"We do try every year to get more student involvement in the night walks," McCord said. "In light of the problems this semester, I would hope that students would take advantage of this opportunity to get involved in the ongoing safety-related activities at IUB."\nRobinson said students can gain a great deal of knowledge by attending one of the Night Walks. "You can learn about the campus, safety issues, why some areas are not lit, and what procedures are necessary to get other areas better lit," she said. "Also students can point out areas they feel need attention, or raise safety concerns."\nThe group walks through one section of campus on each occasion and makes sure that all the paths are well-lit, that bushes are trimmed and that emergency phones are easy accessible. The walk also examines areas that people have registered complains about. This includes places where the lights are out or areas students would like to see more lighting. After the assessment all broken lights are fixed as soon as possible. \n"If it takes longer than two weeks, some should be complaining about it," Robinson said.\nStudents should also understand that there is a reason why certain parts of campus are not well lit. "We really want to encourage people to walk where it is well lit," said Nancy Bannister, a participant in the walk and a member of the professional staff counsel. "We don't light certain areas, such as the wooded ones, because we don't want to give a false sense of security to students."\nHowever, it has become evident that more lighting is not the key to solving all the safety issues on campus.\n"The biggest change I would like to see is to have more education for students," Dean of Students Richard McKaig said. "Students have the tendency to overestimate their safety." \nMcKaig said the biggest safety concern on campus is acquaintance rapes. "The sexual assaults that have occurred are in residence halls, apartments, and houses," he said.\nHe acknowledges that these are not assaults that can be prevented by lighting a dark alley or parking lot because that is not where they are occurring.\nThe Office of Women's Affairs hopes to help prevent acquaintance rapes and assaults with the help of a grant of nearly $200,000 that they recently received from the Department of Justice. \n"There are two primary goals of this grant," Robinson said. "One is to develop sexual assault prevention programs for all IUB students. The other is to develop better coordination between all the different campus and community offices that deal with sexual assaults." \nBeginning next year, the OWA hopes to have required sexual assault classes as part of freshman orientation. \nRobinson said if students are more educated on issues such as sexual assault and rape that they will be more likely to report any problems they may encounter.\n"At other colleges it has been shown that as education on sexual assault increases so does the reporting of sexual assaults," she said. "The data we have now is pretty small and we know it is just the tip of the iceberg."\nOther organizations are also doing their part to help keep students safe. \n"We want to do anything we can to raise awareness," said Senior Keith Utter, director of the campus safety escort service. \nUtter encourages students to use the escort service if they feel at all unsafe walking from place to place. In the near future he wants to make some changes that will make the escort service even more convenient for students to use. \n"We hope to get another van and look to decrease the average amount of time students have to wait for a ride," he said. \nThe safety escort service, the OWA, and the CPS plan to continue to work together in addressing safety issues on campus. They also encourage students, faculty and staff to take part in finding out how they can protect both themselves and others.\n"I think it's got to be helpful for people to know about groups, procedures, and activities on campus that are addressing safety concerns after they have heard about the people who have experienced the feeling of having their safety compromised," McCord said.