COSAM Sen. Allison O’Brien: left, along with other senators and a police officer, evaluate an emergency post located on campus, as part of the Senate Safety Walk. Lindsey Davidson / ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR
SGA senators participated in the annual Safety Walk Tuesday night with Auburn police officers to help find areas on campus that need safety improvements.
The senators split into five groups and looked for areas that were poorly lit or covered by bushes.
Senate President Pro Tempore Griffin Bruns said he thinks the walk will help improve campus safety.
“The Safety Walk is extremely important for campus security because the administration listens to students first and foremost,” he said.
Cpl. Scott Mingus of the Auburn Public Safety Department addressed the senators before the walk.
He told them Risk Management and the administration would listen to their safety concerns.
“Y’all have a voice,” he said. “When y’all start talking, they start listening.”
Mingus said Risk Management has fixed a number of safety problems already.
“It’s been really productive to let the risk managers know and let other officials at the University know what needs to be fixed,” he said. “So far, when we’ve put something on the risk manager’s table, it’s been fixed.”
Sen. Sarah Molony said she also thinks the walk is beneficial.
“The walk is important because it directly brings safety hazards to the attention of the administration,” she said. “In the past, the administration has been great about addressing the problems we find during the Safety Walk.”
The senators took note of several emergency poles that were not working.
“The biggest focus of the safety walk in my mind was making sure that each emergency tower was functioning properly and the Police Department had the correct location of each individual emergency tower on file,” Bruns said. “During the walk, my group corrected the location of a few different emergency towers.”
Molony said some of the poles have been moved because of construction.
“When the towers are moved, sometimes the operators cannot see the location of the activated tower because it has not been reset,” she said.
“We tested all of the towers last night and found the ones that had incorrect addresses.”
She also said the senators found ways to make the poles more effective.
“One major suggestion we made was to add sirens to the towers that would sound when the towers were activated,” she said.
Mingus encouraged the senators to always be aware of their surroundings.
“If you go from point A to Point B, try to stay in teams if you can,” he said. “Let people know where you are. I don’t want you coming out of your dorms doing SWAT rolls, diving in bushes and all that, but just be aware of your surroundings. That’s all we ask you to do.”
He said the Public Safety Department was always available to help students and to hear their concerns.
“We do work 24 hours a day,” Mingus said. “If you see something, if you don’t feel right about something, all you have to do is call us. We need to know these things. If we don’t know, we can’t help you.”
Mingus told the senators they were important in making the campus a safe place.
“I’ve been doing this for 17 years,” he said. “I do not have all the answers. That’s why we have y’all.”
Bruns agreed that the University listens to students about campus safety.
“As mentioned by several police officers, when students speak up about an issue, the administration really listens and acts.”
April 14, 2008 - 9:36am
First, I give the Auburn
First, I give the Auburn police a pat on the back for the great job they do every day. I also give a thank-you to the SGA for being concerned enough to get down in the trenches and really evaluate the security of our campus. We have one of the safest campuses in the nation because of these groups and the administration here at Auburn; however, the aweful death of Ms. Burk proved that it's not enough to be "one of the safest," and the definition of "open campus" means it's impossible for this campus to be completely safe.So what does this mean? We are each responsible for protecting ourselves -- take some basic self-defense classes, carry mace or pepper spray, listen-up (get your head out of your iPod), and never walk alone.
April 16, 2008 - 2:08pm
Campus Security
I hope the SGA noticed on their walk that the Auburn Police have some trouble knowing just exactly WHICH of those emergency buttons gets activated. I own a police scanner and on a night a few weeks back I heard a call come from dispatch that simply stated that an emergency call box was activated in the library parking deck, and they did not know the level on which the call box was activated. What kind of false security is this? This is actually worse than not having those call boxes. A victim who ignorantly assumes that these boxes will alert police to their location may try to stay nearby to be near a police presence when it arrives instead of seeking other, more viable avenues to safety from a predator.We are all saddened by the loss of Ms. Burke, and it was an awful tragedy. There were perhaps, in this case, some measures the community could have been taken to prevent it from happening in the first place, I don't suppose to know whether or not this was the case. I do think that we all need to realize that their is a limit to the amount of security that can and should be provided. If we spared no expense we could absolutely be assured of no crime whatsoever, but we would all lose our civil liberties and possibly every dime we have making it happen. There is a line you can draw in the sand where you say, "this is the amount of security we can provide, beyond this amount it is not worth it." Don't always be took quick to assume we can just add more security and prevent these things from ever happening again. It is an unfortunate fact of life, but horrible things will always happen, and they will often be perpetrated by our fellow humans. By providing a reasonable amount of security and enforcement, and the maximum penalty upon a captured perpetrator we will mitigate problems like these in the future.