Campus Safety and Security

Health on college campuses has been a major source of controversy in the United States in recent years. In the last year, incidents associated with campus violence have occurred all over the state of Connecticut, striking near residences. The accidents, no matter how big or small, are recurrent problems that must be thoroughly investigated and analyzed. The research into why and how violent activities grow on campus will not only help to reduce efforts, but will also aid in a faster response time. It is critical to research on campus protection to understand if criminal offenses perpetrated on educational institutions have elevated or dropped in recent times. Moreover, to efficiently understand the issues related to campus safety, one has to consider finding out how efficient a campus is organized for violent behaviors (Wu & cheng, 2016). Universities can expand with innovative guidelines and specifications for campus safety, but regrettably, this typically takes place as soon as an occurrence has already transpired.

Campus safety is a reasonably new arena in which little has been published with regards to the student as well as educational services. In the past, problems concerning safety and security have been categorized under the subject of law enforcement. Educational consultants have barely thought of maintaining security and safety in the work environment. The experts have been familiarized with human potential as well as student advancement, not in self-defense, campus security as well as safety, and lockdowns (Hope, 2017). The administration along with students usually depend on the campus law enforcement officials or security staff to guard them while they study or work. At the university, regardless of whether it is small or huge, urban or rural, a lot of students tend to be hesitant to go out during the night by themselves.

The Daily Beast published a report which centers on the collection of data and statistics which assists in defining and comprehending criminal offenses across university campuses. The report, released in 2015, associates its results through the year 2006 to 2010 (Zugazuga, Werner, Clifford, Weaver & Ware, 2016). Throughout these five years, the authors document that the rate of criminal offenses has dropped, which may be directly linked to the enhancement of security measures and readiness. The researchers gathered information related to crime statistics along with campus security from the Education Department, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation which showed events reported to the law enforcement agency or the campus administration. The researchers noted that colleges having facilities a long distance away from each other suffered a great deal of insecurity compared to campuses with compact infrastructure. For that reason, more prominent universities may have higher rates of criminal incidences as a result of the mileage between its particular establishments such as hostels and libraries.

The Department of Justice suggests that few institutions have put in place casualty services for ladies to assist them report whenever an assault happens to them. Just as the report above, the Department of Justice examines how the police force, as well as the college administration, have to come together to minimize violent and sexual assaults perpetrated against females. In 2004, the Education Department established that it is against the law for universities to push a sexually violated victim to sign an agreement of confidentiality agreement (Patel & Roesch, 2017). Making it possible for students to come forth is advantageous in investigating college criminal activity and thus efficiently coming up with a solution to deal with the incident. Most educational institutions have implemented the Campus Sexual Assault Victims’ Bill of Rights. The Bill necessitates universities and colleges to formulate as well as submit as part of their yearly safety statement their guidelines concerning the recognition and deterrence of sexual violence, as well as to afford fundamental rights to the sexually violated victims (Patel & Roesch, 2017). The Bill of Rights is going to ideally raise the level of sensitivity concerning the dangers of sexual assault as well as prevent the criminal offenses from taking place in the future.

Since campus safety is an apparent concern to students, educational institutions have to look for approaches to display their dedication to security precautions. To create that efforts apparent to parents, colleges will need to have comprehensive emergency strategies in a position which are in line with the Clery Act, as well as a stationed emergency action facility with a director or commander in control of the procedures (Hope, 2017). Nonetheless, even though those activities are set up, they will still be misalignments since various departments, and teams rarely operate with each other for a cohesive crisis preparedness and reaction. For that reason, whenever an incident takes place, educational facilities in many cases are pushed to a more reactive solution. To deal with this style of reaction, colleges ought to be employing an online event supervision program to enhance their capacity to get ready and react to events cohesively. Through integrating a high-level emergency response application, students are going to be guaranteed that their major worry is being taken seriously and appropriately addressed.

Freshman orientation is a case in point of the way a college can improve preparedness for a challenging occurrence (Hope, 2017). Orientation is a superimposed, multi-pronged function whereby students may be waiting in lines for dormitory tasks, strolling between different activities on campus, and taking excursions and relocating with their parents. The crisis preparedness aspect of orientation consists of recording response processes at crucial meeting locations, setting up protocols of communication, and establishing live RSS feeds to keep track of weather conditions and reports on traffic. Through putting into action an incident supervision program to efficiently keep track of campus activities, the administration can adequately address issues concerning the relocation of students’ events due to severe thunderstorms. Moreover, it will be easier for the committee to ascertain whether the gathering locations are supplied with the appropriate medical equipment and ensuring that the law enforcement or security staff are in a position to re-enhance security and minimize crime rates.

If a crisis arises, like an extreme storm leading to downed trees along with other destruction on the campus, an event management plan can effortlessly shift from keeping track of operations to actively dealing with the situation. Any individual having a mobile device that is logged into the event management application can upload images and video clip so that the university staff can assess the incident and transmit information to the relevant professionals. Mobile phone users can additionally post a request for resources from the field which the emergency team can supervise and process in real-time in case they are a distance away from the crisis location.

It is evident that security and safety is a primary issue on campuses across the globe and it is every educational institution’s wish to guarantee that their students, as well as faculty, are protected all the time. Through developing comprehensive emergency preparedness strategies and making use of an incident management application, campus administrations are going to efficiently have exhibited their determination to campus safety and security (Moldaysky & Tocco, 2015).

References

Hope, J. (2017). Understand the top facts academic administrators should know about campus safety. Dean and Provost, 19(3), 6-7.

Moldavsky, D., & Tocco, J. A. (2015). U.S. Patent No. 9,219,980. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Patel, U., & Roesch, R. (2017). Campus sexual assault: an examination of policy and research. Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research.

Wu, T., & Chen, X. (2016). Research of Campus Security Awareness Diffusion Based on Lotka-Volterra Model. In Mechanical Engineering and Control Systems: Proceedings of 2015 International Conference on Mechanical Engineering and Control Systems (MECS2015) (pp. 243-247).

Zugazaga, C., Werner, D., Clifford, J. E., Weaver, G. S., & Ware, A. (2016). Increasing personal safety on campus: implementation of a new personal security system on a university campus. College student affairs journal, 34(1), 33-47.