A call for safety in the city

City life offers excitement and entertainment not available to students on a small-town… City life offers excitement and entertainment not available to students on a small-town campus. Living in the city also involves more danger – it’s a risk not every college student will take.

We can’t ignore the perils of life on campus. A woman walking Carnegie Mellon’s track was raped on a late August Sunday night. Just a week ago two women were sexually assaulted on the stairs leading to Pitt’s fraternity houses.

To make things more disturbing, they were attacked on a path maintained by the University, yet three lights along the way were out. According to Jim Fischerkeller, a library staff member at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, the lights were out for more than a month and he filed multiple requests that they be fixed.

The lights were repaired the day after the attack and Vice Chancellor of Public Affairs Robert Hill said Pitt never received any previous reports about the lights.

Which means something probably happened to the reports along the way.

Anyone who’s ever tried to send a message across departments, or has ever walked into Thackeray Hall, for that matter, knows that it can take several requests – and several months – to get something through.

While this inefficiency annoys students trying to get grade reports, it’s life threatening when safety matters don’t receive proper attention. At the same time, it’s Pitt’s responsibility to meet certain standards and maintain the safety features they promise us.

Pitt’s Web site (www.pitt.edu/~safety) offers safety features such as the campus bus and shuttle services, campus police who work with city and state officers, and “more than 400 emergency phones through a well-lit campus.”

You may be reassured by the presence of emergency phones on-campus – until you realize that they’re all located in well-populated areas. A student exiting Hillman Library or Alumni Hall after-hours might be relieved to see a shining blue phone light right outside the door.

Nevermind that a student assaulted in such a spot would probably run back into the building just as easily.

Wander a little farther from the main buildings, however, and the blue beacons become more sparse. Many of the side streets connecting main thoroughfares have no blue-light phones at all. These roads are common shortcuts but are often empty.

I realized what little comfort the phones provide on a pre-dawn run two weeks ago. I rarely saw a phone on side streets, and though Sutherland Drive offered a few phones, I had to search to find them because three of the blue lights were out.

University officials must do their part in keeping the campus safe. We need better lighting and more emergency phones on isolated paths. Lights and phones already in place must be monitored.

There needs to be a more direct, reliable way to report complaints – a look at Pitt’s phone directory show multiple numbers for nearly every service, making it hard to know who to call.

Reports should be taken seriously and, when crimes occur, students need to hear about them right away. Though crime reports were posted in the area around last week’s attack, many off-campus students didn’t hear about it until The Pitt News ran a story nearly a week later.

With proper care, living in the city can be an incredible experience. I’ve never regretted coming here and, for the most part, I’ve felt reasonably safe.

We can’t live in fear – getting around campus shouldn’t be a risk we have to consider.

Columnist J. Elizabeth Strohm promises not to run alone before dawn anymore if Pitt promises to keep the campus well-lit after dark. E-mail her at jstrohm@pittnews.com.