Importance Of Campus Safety Essay

The Safety of College Campuses today Campus safety was not always a major priority for many universities a decade ago. This unfortunately came at a price for one school back in 2007. On April 16th, a Virginia tech Senior managed to kill a total of 32 people and wounding 17 others on campus. If a single shooter managed to hurt and kill a total of 49 people on two different parts of campus, it was clear that Virginia tech had a major weakness involving campus safety resources. Jill Castellano a writer for Forbes magazine says the outcome of this incident is best described as a “trigger for the growing number of campus safety resources nationwide” (Castellano, 1). Jill was right. Soon after the incident, all Universities across the country put …show more content…
Little do they know is that University Police and Public officials are the most efficacious resource a college provides for campus safety. University Police provides a long list of services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The University police department has primary responsibility for crime prevention, law enforcement, parking control, emergency preparedness/response, and security at special events. In the eyes of many universities that is not enough for campus safety. Over the last 10 years, public safety officials employed by the university have been growing at an astonishing rate. The Bureau of Justice Statistics report in January of 2015 stated that “full-time campus law enforcement employees grew by 16%, which outpaced the 11% growth in student enrollment” (Castellano, 1). This is great for the safety of individuals on campus because university police can account for all students even with the increases of students throughout each …show more content…
In a situation of immediate emergency on campus such as a robbery on campus, West Virginia University will send out an emergency alert text to all students living on campus. This emergency text includes a description of the crime, description of the criminal, location, and certain arears to avoid. This helps students on campus to reconsider any places they will be heading to. This is extremely beneficial for students, but the only downside with this is anybody who is not affiliated with WVU will not be receiving theses updates. This may be a great resource for WVU, but it may not be one of the best due to the fact the emergency text alert only reaches students and other people who are affiliated with WVU such as