---

Jeff Davidson | Phoenix Staff

Shown above is Whittier Place at night. The campus walk checked for lighting deficiencies around campus.

BY MINH-DUYEN NGUYEN

In print | Published October 22, 2009

Student Council hosted a safety walk Monday to pinpoint areas on campus that need more lighting. The walk was part of a continued initiative by the council and the Swarthmore administration to increase student safety on campus. There will also be a new officer on patrol by foot overnight, in response to recent safety concerns.

Student Council Vice President Nate Erskine ’10 and Campus Life Representative Omari Scott ’12 attended the walk with Vice President of Facilities and Services Stu Hain, Director of Public Safety Owen Redgrave and Swarthmore Maintenance Manager Bill Maguire.

The areas that will be receiving new light fixtures include the tunnel pathway leading to Mary Lyon, the pathways leading up to Wharton, the athletics complex, the Women’s Resource Center, and the pathway between McCabe Library and Willets. While new light fixtures will be added in some areas of campus, much of the inadequate lighting is a result of burned out or dimmed light bulbs. Public Safety regularly checks for burned out light fixtures, but Hain suggested that students should report any burned out fixtures they see.

Student Council has made campus safety a key focus in its agenda this year. In its past meetings, Student Council started discussions about campus safety with the Swarthmore administration and with the DART and SMART teams. A large part of this discussion involved the issue of inadequate lighting on campus.

“There have been several students that have come up to us and expressed concern about how there are parts of campus that aren’t well lit,” Erskine said.

The safety walk used to occur annually, but has not occurred in the past few years.

“This [safety walk] came out of a general discussion about campus safety that started probably more intensely last spring with a couple instances that happened on campus,” Hain said.

The first incident involved a visiting student from Villanova University who was accosted by an allegedly armed attacker. The second incident involved a Wharton resident who found a potentially armed attacker hiding in her room.

These incidents are the first incidents on the Swarthmore campus involving an implied weapon “in over ten years,” according to Redgrave.

Student Council and the administration hope that the increased lighting will act as a deterrent for would-be attackers and enable students to be more aware of their surroundings.

“The lights will allow you to see people approaching you and might allow you to identify people and see what’s going on,” Hain said. “That’s certainly a major piece of it. It’s probably not as comfortable for a person to do something to you if there is light and you’re out in the open.”

The well-lit areas will center on pathways between academic buildings and dorms.

“The idea is to try and concentrate light in walkways and work to get people to walk where the light is, not the other way around,” Hain said. “The intention is to light the pathways all the way up to the dorms but not flood the dorms with lights unless there is a huge cry for that. The intention has never been to put so many lights up around the dorms that you have to close your blinds.”

However, Redgrave warns that crimes occur in both well-lit and dark areas. Hain, Redgrave, and Maguire worry that with more lighting, students will no longer be on their guard against possible attackers. While lighting, to a degree, does increase campus safety, it should not be an assurance of safety.

“There aren’t statistics on how lighting affects crime behavior,” Redgrave said. “There seems to be too many variables in there to draw any real conclusions. Most people would agree that adequate lighting is necessary. But there are studies that many more candlepower [levels of light intensity] has no major effect, it gives the perception that people are more safe and causes them to drop their defenses.”

The incident involving the allegedly armed gunman illustrates the inadequacy of lighting as a deterrent to crime. The attacker followed the student down a well-lit path, though he only accosted the student after they entered the unlit grass strip between Mertz and Alice Paul.

In addition to increased lighting on campus, Hain and Redgrave also discussed improving on-campus patrols.

“We are changing the way we patrol the campus at night,” Hain said. “There is a person that now patrols the campus at night. We have a contract to have a person here at night we didn’t have before. He will be the eyes and ears on campus, walking campus with a radio. Walking, not in a vehicle, so he will be a foot patrol.”

The patrol will be staffed using a service that provides security for many nearby campuses and will report to Public Safety. Redgrave and Hain believe that a foot patrol is necessary and will be an improvement to campus safety because Public Safety is unable to patrol the interior of the campus with a vehicle. The patrol will be working from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. or from 9 p.m. to 3:30 a.m.

Despite these changes, the most important aspect of the security initiative has been encouraging students to be on guard.

Student Council and the administration continue to encourage students to program Public Safety’s number into their phones and discourage door propping in dorms.

“We are hoping we can change student behavior,” Hain said. “We are hoping to make a big difference in that.”

Students with further concerns or suggestions about areas on campus that have insufficient lighting should contact Student Council or Stu Hain.

---

« RETURN TO NEWS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »