By Josh Siatkowski | Staff Writer
Construction on the portion of University Parks Drive that lies beneath Interstate 35 has cut off power to emergency call towers near Baylor Law School.
Don Rodman, assistant chief of police at BUPD, said although BUPD will have the affected emergency call towers running again as soon as possible, there are other ways students can protect themselves on campus.
For example, Baylor’s partnership with Rave’s Campus Guardian app provides students with direct communication with BUPD, even when the towers are out of sight or out of commission.
“It gives you a blue light call box at your fingertips,” Rodman said. “There’s a feature in [the app] called Safewalk, and it drops [a] breadcrumb trail, and if you don’t reach a set destination in the amount of time you set, then it alerts BUPD if you allow it.”
The Safewalk feature gives students the ability to share their location along a trail or destination with their “guardian” of choice. Rodman said the guardian can be BUPD, but it can also be a parent, friend or roommate.
The Campus Guardian app, which was announced in fall 2022, has since been downloaded by over 2,800 students, while the Safewalk feature has been activated 125 times. Rodman said he encourages students to use the Safewalk feature, especially when alone or out at night, and the app has already outperformed the towers.
“To be honest, [the towers] don’t get used very often,” Rodman said. “Starting in August 2023 up until today, we’ve had three activations.”
According to Rodman, only one of these activations reported any suspicious activity. A lost student and a curious child were responsible for the other two.
Such a low usage rate may make it seem as though the towers are ineffective, but Rodman said that is not the case.
“The emergency call boxes are there because they provide a presence of safety,” Rodman said. “It deters potential crime.”
Nashville, Tenn., freshman Sadie Gower is an avid runner on the Bear Trail and surrounding areas, and she said she’s never felt unsafe when running on the Baylor campus.
“I think the fact that I’ve never felt unsafe speaks to the quality of security on campus,” Gower said.
Even with an occasional blue light tower outage, there are 23 campus safety programs already in effect that can be found on pages 35 and 36 of the Baylor Campus Fire and Safety Report.
