Memo

TO: Paul A. Mascari, Chief/Director of Public Safety

FROM: Kelsey Fager, Graduating Senior
DATE: September 24, 2014
SUBJECT: Student Safety Issues

While Marquette Public Safety positively impacts the safety and wellbeing our
Marquette community, my purpose is to explain the negative aspects of using Marquette's
Public Safety services, in hopes that the services provided can be improved as to help
Marquette Students get around at night whether alone or in groups. The main aspects of our
safety programs include the LIMO services, the blue-light phones, and the general area safety
precautions. The need for improving safety on Marquettes campus is not anything new, but it
is a reoccurring issue that students believe should become a priority.
To provide safe transportation during high-risk times, Marquette Student Safety
Services provides LIMO's to help transport students around campus. Unfortunately, these
LIMOs are not running as smoothly and safely as they could be. One issue is the maltreatment
of safety regulations on the LIMOs themselves. Students rarely wear their seatbelts or follow
the expressed safety guidelines. Secondly, the young and inexperienced student drivers often
exceed the speed limit and fail to drive cautiously on the bumpy roads around campus. This
may be due to the increasing pressure on the drivers to provide a quick and efficient experience
for students. As a student riding a LIMO for 15 minutes to travel only a few blocks, the
efficiency of the experience could be improved.
In partnership with the LIMOs, Student Safety Services provides Student Walkers who
are hired to patrol campus and walk students to their destinations. As a student, I am still
unconvinced they are successful in their position. They walk around in pairs patrolling the
campus but fail to carry any form of protection. While this service is provided, many students
do not utilize it for this reason. Similarly, the service is not efficient because it takes a long time
for the Walkers to travel to the pick-up point. To better utilize this service, they should create a
schedules system in which students request the Walkers at certain times. This would increase
the efficiency of the system.
Marquette Public Safety also has blue light phones around campus. These devices are
placed at various locations around campus and automatically call Public Safety at the press of a
button. Though I have never had to personally use one of these phones, I am glad to see that
Public Safety installs new ones regularly. Let's face it, if you were walking alone and an armed
robber wanted to harm you, it would be helpful to have a blue light phone within walking
distance. The blue lights are a great feature on campus.
Lastly, students need to understand the danger of walking alone at night. Marquette
students should be aware of the boundaries where Public Safety patrols. For example, many do
not know that the Public Safety patrolled area is larger than the Marquette LIMOs route. While
this is true, even walking in groups has been unsafe. When students are leaving organization
meetings or even night classes, a policy to address this problem should support faculty and staff
members should be reminding students to call a limo to get home safely.