Are you afraid of the dark? Are you afraid
to leave your residence hall after the sun goes down? With all of the recent incidents around the Berea area, it raises the question; how safe are we here at Baldwin Wallace?
I like to think that I am safe here. I am a teenage girl and I frequently walk home alone at night across campus. Being a science major, I spend a majority of my time on North Campus in Telfer and Wilker Halls. North Campus is home to many residence halls, academic buildings, and Ritter Library. In addition, North Campus serves as the home of Baldwin Wallace Safety and Security.
The one thing North Campus lacks is lights.
While walking back from night class, I cannot help but notice how dark North Quad is. Granted, there are normally a lot of students walking back to South Campus after class, but there are times where I am the only student making the trek. When it comes to the lighting of North Campus, lights are scattered, leaving some areas of the quad in the dark. When it does come to some of the street lights on North Campus, they do not work, or are dark.
For a huge section of my walk back to my residence hall room, I do not know what is lurking in the shadows. Granted there is nothing in the shadows, but one day there might be.
When it comes to the blue safety lights which are scattered across campus, there are only two in the entire section of North Quad. One of the lights is in front of Wheeler Hall, the education building, while the other light is between Burrell Observatory and Ward Hall, the geology building. North Campus is fairly large when compared to the other regions of campus. The walks between the Lou Higgins Recreation Center and the Math & Computer Science building alone have two blue emergency lights. It is a little odd that a huge area such as the Quad has two lights, while the small walkway between the Rec and MACS has the same amount. If I were to need assistance when walking home from Telfer, I would need to walk across the quad or in the opposite direction of my intended destination. Would it not be a solution to install another safety light in the area of the residence halls or to install a few more street lights along the sidewalk?
In light of the recent events, I feel like we as students and the school community need to take more precautions to protect ourselves. Whether it is installing more lights on North Quad, not letting unknown individuals into the residence halls, or even using the buddy system to walk back from night class, we as students need to take responsibility for our safety. We, as students need to work with the school in a respectful manner to make critical safety changes on campus.