To improve campus safety and make students feel secure, Linfield Public Safety (LPS) installed emergency phones around campus that students could use if they felt unsafe. However, these phones were removed around 2020. Why were they removed, and would students feel safer if we still had them?
“I feel safe walking around campus during the day, but when it gets dark, I would say I don’t feel safe, especially on the outskirts of campus,” said Kaeley Green, a sophomore at Linfield.
If students feel unsafe walking around at night, why did LPS remove the emergency phones? According to Erik Stenehjem, Senior Director of Safety and Risk Management, in the three years leading up to the removal, the phones were used twice. Students would just use their cell phones to call LPS instead of using the landlines.
Along with the lack of usage, the emergency phones were starting to need a lot of work according to Stenehjem. LPS decided this amount of work was not worth keeping the phones if students weren’t using them.
However, shouldn’t there be some sort of way students can reach LPS faster than calling them? Turns out, there is. Stenehjem highlighted that there is also a campus safety app, called Rave Guardian. Rave Guardian is a safety app that can call LPS and 911 faster than the emergency phones and even cell phones. The app has messages and even a timer feature where if a student were walking from the library to Jane Failing, and it normally takes them 15 minutes, the app would automatically alert LPS if the student took too long to reach their destination.
While this sounds like a great safety tool, a lot of students don’t know about it. When asked about the app, Green had no idea it existed. It seems that this potentially life-saving app should be advertised more to inform the study body of its benefits.
Stenehjem explained there are posters on most resident hall doors advertising the app, but students are unlikely to pay attention to these small messages. Since this resource is so important, LPS could find more ways to spread the word.
However, there isn’t much to worry about. Stenehjem claims Linfield has a very safe campus and is located in a good neighborhood with low crime rates. He says that if anything were to happen, people are good at reporting incidents and LPS has a positive relationship with the McMinnville Police Department. They get more complaints about students than the other way around.
Although the emergency phones have been removed, there are other safety tools that are more efficient than landlines. Stenehjem says that other schools have found this as well as most of these types of emergency phones have been removed from other campuses. However, it is important to spread the word about these tools such as Rave Guardian so students have the resources they need in case of an emergency.
