As students have returned to campus this past week, many students and their families are wary about Moscow’s security. As such, the campus community has begun working together to help keep each other safe.
The University of Idaho has put much emphasis on ensuring the safety of the campus community.
“We were very concerted as institutional leadership on helping students understand that we have their safety as the first and foremost value of what we do,” Dean of Students Blaine Eckles said.
Alongside increased police activity on campus, the university also hired Hells Canyon Security out of Lewiston to provide extra men on the ground for the Safe Walk program. This is a year-round service that provides officers to walk students from place to place when they feel unsafe on campus. Especially with the recent events, university leadership wanted to ensure that there was enough staff to facilitate that program.
“We wanted to make sure especially with that being open ended, we were committing on that responsibility to have a stronger safety presence (on campus),” Eckles said.
Along with increased Safe Walk officers, the university has also implemented a SafeRide program, where, during nighttime hours, people on campus can call the Safe Walk number, 1-208-885-7233, and get picked up in a van to be taken home to their campus residence.
Some university students have already used and enjoyed the new SafeRide van.
“It was actually really fun to interact with students that I don’t get to on a regular basis, especially outside of the Greek community,” ASUI Pro Tempore Martha Smith said. “I really highly recommend students take advantage of this opportunity because it’s not something that we normally do as a university.”
It is not clear yet if the university will continue the van program past the end of the semester. But other members of the Vandal community are also rising up to help protect girls on campus.
Kerry Uhlorn, a UI and Delta Gamma alumna, organized a movement that led to every Greek woman on campus to have a personal alarm device, as well as extras for the rest of the Vandal community.
Uhlorn originally had the idea to just buy a few for her old house to be shared across the membership, which she brought to her alumni organization.
“Then they just wanted to keep doing more, and they wanted every member to have one, and then they wanted help out other houses,” Uhlorn said. “And it kind of snowballed from there.”
The alarms purchased were Birdie alarms, a small lighter-sized object, that when you pull the ring at the top, emit a bright flash and a loud siren until they run out of battery.
The donations were organized through a Facebook group and were run through Uhlorn’s Venmo. The group raised $20,103 for the purchase of the alarms, purchasing 2,187 alarms total.
Uhlorn stopped accepting donations Wednesday night, and has passed the initiative on to Marie Duncan, who will be overseeing the dispersal of the alarms to students on campus.
To request an alarm, email [email protected].
Abigail Spencer can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @ABairdSpencer