An after-hours Pedestrian Safety Committee will review and make recommendations for improving campus services, policies and practices relating to the safety of pedestrians on campus, particularly at night.
The committee will serve in an Ad-Hoc basis under the 105th Administration of the ASUW Student Government.
“I will be working in cooperation with the ASUW Senate and the Division of Student Affairs, along with UWPD and Information Technology,” ASUW President Benjamin Wetzel said.
The purpose of these services, policies and practices focus on the impact of sexual violence, harassment and assault against students, staff and faculty on the University of Wyoming campus.
“We are trying to find ways to improve after-hour safety for students, whether that is, lighting on campus or introducing personal safety apps that students have access to,” co-chair of the committee and ASUW senator Wendy Hungerford said. “In addition, we are planning to find ways to improve services that are already in place and make students knowledgeable about them.”
The committee went into effective on Jan.1, 2018 and will operate until the end of the current ASUW Administration. If approved by the next ASUW student administration, it will continue to exist in the future as well.
The Rave Guardian Campus Safety application allows students to create safety profiles to alert friends and family when they are walking alone. It also features a safety timer to alert campus security when a student does not arrive at a planned destination within a certain amount of time. The app has a panic button that, when pressed, alerts campus security of where a student is.
“We have had three meetings so far and we are pushing to get the personal safety application called Rave Guardian, funded,” Hungerford said.
Freshman student Erica Fischer said, “I’m looking forward to this app. UW is already a relatively safe environment, but there is certainly room for improvement. Especially university transportation is not available late at night, but plenty of students walk from the library to their residences.”
Implementation of these safety measures is a collaborative effort of different departments. The committee is further looking into issues that need to be addressed.
“We are doing lighting audits on campus, so we walk around and find where the poorly lit areas on campus are,” Hungerford said. “But we are mostly focusing on the personal safety application right now.”
