Recently, there seems to be more crime on campus than usual. Just in the last two weeks of the fall term, two armed robberies occurred near the sorority houses and a female student was attacked and nearly kidnapped outside of Hamilton Hall. As a girl who just finished the first quarter of her freshman year at the University of Oregon, I am not feeling safe when I walk home from the library at night.
Here’s what the university is doing wrong — and what it’s doing right — in combatting crime on and near campus.
The most significant problem is that the Designated Driver Shuttle is inefficient. DDS does not appear to have sufficient resources for the demand placed upon it by the current campus environment. On more than one occasion, I have called DDS around midnight or a bit later after leaving an event, and received the dial tone for two minutes before I hung up. Another time, I was told there was a 45-minute wait.
If someone is in danger or feels unsafe in his or her surroundings, they cannot wait for 45 minutes. Fifteen minutes, at the absolute maximum, should be the wait time for DDS. If this means putting money into more vans with more drivers, then that is an excellent place for my tuition money. Even if I don’t use DDS, I’m happy to support it for my friends or any other student that seriously needs a ride because they feel unsafe.
Every year, there is a Campus Night Walk, in which students critique the lighting in an attempt to create a fully lit campus at night. But were the residence halls even a consideration in this walk? It is important that we are safe walking from class to class after the sun sets, but equally important that we feel safe where we live as freshmen. When even the lights of Matthew Knight Arena cannot illuminate the outside of Hamilton enough to thwart an attacker’s confidence to strike, there is a problem.
On a positive note, the university does an excellent job of notifying students when there is crime on campus. Within five hours of the Hamilton Hall attack, students were given alerts via email, text and other communications.
Improving the DDS system by reducing the on-call time to fifteen minutes or less, and providing better lighting around the residence halls would go a long way towards the safety and security of all University of Oregon students.