Women's Safety Today

Today,

Women's safety on and off campus today has grown substantially but so has the safety of everyone on and off campus. Today, safety and privacy go hand and hand but it is often hard to have both when it comes to the public world. Safety is hard to combine with privacy because privacy usually tends to take some safety out of the picture, and adding more safety usually tends to strip away one's privacy. I do, however, feel as if the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, as well as the rest of the United States, has done a pretty substantially well job at supplying its citizens and visitors somewhat adequate forms of both privacy and safety. There are many things on campus that provide women safety as well as men, but I don’t think they cover everything the full one hundred percent.

Safety can come in many forms and it is typically applied more towards the women of the world, but quite often do we find the male counterpart needing it sometimes just as much as the women do. In the past, we didn't have the technology to help advance our safety limitations but now we have a bunch of technology at our disposal to help make the world and campus more safe than it was prior. On campus, although not necessarily a super recent addition, we have added substantial lighting to almost all areas of campus. This allows people to feel more comfortable and safe while walking at night because there is less of a chance of a surprise attack happening and more of a chance that someone else will happen to be around and actually be able to see the event occurring due to such lighting systems.

Another addition we have seen in the recent years at the University of Illinois is the addition of the blue light emergency phone system that we see all around campus. This addition is hard to find information as to when the exact year of implementation was, but this may be the most controversial tool for safety the campus has added in its recent years. Although a very good tool to have on campus, the ease of use and quick access allows for pranksters to utilize it as a piece of “terrorizing” the police force by making a bunch of random and non-real scenario calls in place of emergency calls. Not to say that this has happened, but recent statistics from the police station shows that only one or two calls have been real and needed emergency attention. This is where the second controversy comes in, is it a waste of money? With only one or two calls at most a year, some would argue that it’s actually just a waste of money. In my opinion, even one real call makes it all worthwhile.

One of my favorites and most likely the favorite amongst most of the students on campus would be the addition of SafeRides and SafeWalks that they had added to the campus. This is actually an extension of the CUMTD bus transiting system that the school and city employ which also comes out of each student’s tuition. Some students may dislike the idea that each student technically pays for it, but then again they have to anyways to use the daily bussing system on campus so you might as well pay the fee. In addition, by each person paying a small contribution towards it, each person has access to it and can utilize whenever they deem it necessary. I think the addition to these services is the best tool for women’s safety and men’s safety as well because it provides a private, safe, quick and direct way to reach your destination after light hours. In addition, it allows students who may be trapped waiting for a bus in harsh conditions where taking the standard bussing systems are not as plausible. I myself have taken SafeRides before and would say it is one of if not the most vital tool for making the campus safer for women as well as the male counterpart for every aspect of safety imaginable.

In conclusion, safety for women on campus has grown substantially but even so, we aren’t the safest we can be just yet. I still believe there are flaws in our safety guidelines and practices that we can still fix but it may take time to find the correct way to go about it. For the times when the campus wasn’t at its top of its game in terms of safety and an event does happen to occur, the best thing is that there are different groups who can help you through it as well as plenty of staff run programs or people who you can go to help and either talk to someone about the event or try to work with them so that you are safe and covered as the victim in the event. For these things it is recommended that women visit the Women’s Resource Center for any additional advice or help as noone ever expects or deserves anything that violates their rights as a person and their right to equal safety as the rest of humanity.