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New Program Provides Nighttime Walking Escorts

The student-run program is putting the buddy system into practice and offering "safe walks" for students, faculty and staff on campus after hours.

By La Monica Everett-Haynes, Academy

Feb. 22, 2008

It was a well-known but unsettling statistic that led Carly Thomsen and others to introduce a new plan meant to make sure fewer students are walking around The Academy of Arizona campus alone at nighttime.

Thomsen, director of the UA educatee-run Women’southward Resources Eye, cited a late 1980s study that constitute one in four higher age women nationally are either victims of sexual attack or know someone who has been.

“The unfortunate part is that since 1987, these statistics have been replicated multiple times,” said Thomsen, also a master’due south caste student in the UA women’s studies program. “This is a way we tin take back the nighttime.”

During the fall, she and her colleagues at the Women’due south Resource Center launched Safe Walk after receiving a $sixteen,400 grant from the UA Parents & Family Association, which focuses on family-oriented issues and supports a number of campus organizations.

“The UA is especially dark at night, so we’re trying to increase the feeling of safety on campus,” said Briana Dorrenbacher, the center’s outreach and development intern and a UA senior studying psychology and women's studies. “We feel safety using the buddy system.”

The centre views Safe Walk as a proactive initiative.

Kristen Barnes, a Prophylactic Walk volunteer who also coordinates the center’south self-defence force program, said people will sometimes take self-defense classes after existence victimized. But Prophylactic Walk is focusing on a dissimilar arroyo, she said.

“Safe Walk is teaching prevention and learning how to protect yourself: walking on well lit streets, parking under lights, telling people where you are going. These things tin can prevent a potential assault,” Barnes added, saying that the escorts sometimes talk about rubber issues on their walks.

“Y'all tin always learn self-defence force, but prevention is central here," she said.

Prophylactic Walk, which runs from 7:30 p.g. to 11:thirty p.m. Monday through Friday, allows students, faculty and staff to phone call the office for an escorted walk anywhere inside the University’due south designated boundaries. It by and large takes 15 minutes for the pair of escorts to make it.

The middle says Condom Walk is an alternative to Safe Ride, which drives callers to their destinations.

Both Safety Walk and Safe Ride fall under the direction of the Associated Students of the University of Arizona and represent only two examples of numerous efforts on campus to amend campus rubber. Others include self-defense force courses at the Women’southward Resource Center, and talks the UA Law Department delivers to student groups and in student housing.

Only like Safe Walk, the Safe Ride plan is trying to help improve campus condom but has had difficultly with need in the past, said Lauren Smith, Safe Ride’due south operations director.

The programme, which offers free rides to students traveling in and effectually the University’s designated boundaries, purchased two new vehicles last semester.

The plan is besides in the process of finding a company that will ready an hold service for callers and so that people don't have to continually call for an open line, Smith said.

Administrators are likewise looking into the possibility of expanding boundaries and service hours, which are at present 6:xxx p.k. to ane a.k. Lord's day through Thursday and 6:thirty to 9:thirty p.m. on Friday.

“The expansion is smashing, and it’s something we definitely needed,” said Brittany Smith, Safe Ride’s administrative director and a double major in economic science and math.

She added that Safe Ride has been able to practise such work considering of a $28,700 grant from the UA Parents & Family unit Association and an additional $l,000 from the UA administration.

“The demand at present is much higher than what we’ve seen in the past, but we’ve been lucky to get money this final year that we’ve needed,” Smith added. “Our hope is that all students will employ the service and be able to become a condom ride when they need ane.”

Extra info

Safe Walk operates Monday through Friday, 7:xxx to 11:xxx p.m. To request an escort, phone call 520-471-5262.

Condom Ride operates  Dominicus through Thursday 6:30 p.thousand. to ane a.chiliad. and Fridays from half-dozen:thirty p.thou.  to 9:thirty p.m. For a ride, phone call 520-621-7233.

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Source: https://news.arizona.edu/story/new-program-provides-nighttime-walking-escorts

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