First, I must thank you for running your five part articles on SART last week. It is a very important subject to talk about. Yet, even with your articles about what to do in case you are victimized, where were the articles about how to prevent these tragedies from occurring?

After reading a few of the articles last week, I decided to see for myself how safe campus is. What I found was not good.

The area around the Campanile has got to be one of the most unsafe areas on this entire campus. While the sidewalks are mostly lit, the great expanses of grass aren’t, and the many trees on central campus would provide more than enough cover for an attacker to strike.

Also, on my walk to the library, I walked by more then a dozen young men and women walking by themselves in the night. A few of which would have been easy prey for a ruthless attacker, for there would have been no one to help.

Students on campus need to be more concerned for their own safety, even if it means walking a longer route where there are more people. Safety on campus is severely lacking. Not once in my few trips at night to the library from Larch Hall have I seen a security officer of any kind, and even if they were undercover, I would say it wasn’t enough.

Of course, in various parking lots, I saw plenty of blue Department of Safety trucks looking for cars to give tickets to.

Maybe the DPS should be more concerned about Public Safety rather than Parking Safety.

I suggest that if DPS will continue to worry more about getting as much money as possible through parking tickets and less about actual safety other than picking up drunks outside the bars on Friday and Saturday nights, then it’s up to us as students to help make campus safer. It would not take much, just an hour or two if you get bored some evening. Just grab a jacket and a friend, and go for a walk or even a jog around the Campanile for awhile. Just the presence of people is sometimes enough to prevent assaults of any kind.

I would like to see a student escort service formed, much like UNI has. I’ve heard there is one, yet I’ve seen no phone numbers for them on any public phone on campus, so what good are they? If I’ve heard wrong, then a new one should be started.

So grab a friend, and go for a walk. Someone’s life may depend on it.

Jeremy Blankenship

Sophomore

History education