Campus safety should be a priority

For many UNCW students, campus is also known as home. It’s home to students dropped off at the beginning of the year; their new residence now some small dorm room on the edge of campus.

It’s also home to several of us off-campus students who still spend many waking, or sleeping, hours on campus.

Either way, this campus should feel like a safe haven as we endure classes and our everyday lives.

For the most part, UNCW has done its part to keep this campus safe. With the aid of the new “Task Force on Campus Violence Prevention,” students have begun to feel a little safer since the murders a year ago.

According to the Introduction on the campus safety website, ” the task force on campus violence prevention is to review the safety and security of the campus community, with particular emphasis on student interactions with each other. It consists of people from outside the university as well as faculty, staff and students at UNCW.”

However, specific events have occurred recently that have left students wondering how safe our campus really is. A “peeping tom’ who was caught videotaping girls on campus last August of 2004 was recently convicted on two felony counts of Voyeurism and one felony count of breaking and entering. As word of this incident spreads, female students become apprehensive about just using the restroom facilities on campus.

Last week a UNCW student claimed she was assaulted while jogging on campus. Although the accusations turned out to be her own fabrication, anxiety had already spread. Safety issues started resurfacing within the first few days of her apparent assault. However, the question on everybody’s mind is, did she make this up to caution students running at night on University grounds? Or was she simply out for attention? Nevertheless, concern pricked the ears of students and safety officials alike.

Thankfully, with the University’s new task force, UNCW has made new and continuing students feel safe about walking around campus. These recent incidents can either help us or hinder us. We can let them scare us or we can use them as caution and be aware of our surroundings as we walk around our campus that many call home.