At 8:40 p.m. last Friday, a robbery occurred in the bathroom on the tunnel level of Hoyt Hall. This attack has demonstrated a need to better protect students in the hard-to-patrol, secluded tunnel system. While UR Security’s response to the incident was appropriately thorough, it should look into more preventative measures for the future. Additionally, it would be wise for this office to take the time to assess other areas in which it can be a more effective and efficient entity within the UR community.
For the tunnels specifically, Facilities and Security should collaborate to establish ID swipe card access, barring people without IDs effective in the early evening. Moreover, it is important for officers to patrol the tunnel system when there are evening events.
When incidents occur, Security currently notifies only undergraduate students by e-mail or through the AlertUR system. According to Director of Security Walter Mauldin, both AlertUR and the e-mail notification system will ‘hopefully” be extended to all faculty, staff and students by the spring 2010 semester. Security needs to make it a priority to make this service all-encompassing within the University community this should be completed without question by the end of next semester. By currently limiting the reach of this service, it leaves members of University community at risk.
Each week, Security is tasked with stacks of paperwork; until it updates its current paper-based filing system, the office will be unnecessarily bogged down with extra work recording reports on paper, only to be entered on the computer later. Residential Life transferred its system of incident reporting online years ago, and Security officers should follow suit. Just because one experiment four years ago with an electronic record management system was unsuccessful, there is no excuse for why Security shouldn’t be actively pursuing another option now. Officers need the tools to serve the campus the best they can and moving into the digital age would streamline the time-consuming paperwork process.
