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School Security
Staying Safe on Campus
By Sue Marquette Poremba
A roommate or friend should know your class schedule. Leave a specific away message on your Instant Messenger (such as "studying at the library" or "hanging with Nick").
Students have thousands of dollars of electronic equipment, bicycles and other personal items, and theft is a common campus problem.
"Colleges pride themselves on fostering the notion that students are fully adult and capable of making every decision for themselves, and at the first error reacting excessively to it," Delafield says. Students need to find out what the school's code of ethics is. It is easy for a student to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Have your child give you a list of important numbers. Social Security, driver's license, credit cards and student identification are all good things for the parents to keep copies of. Also make sure you have the phone numbers for police and medical services on campus.
Statistics alone are scary. A year with an unusual amount of violent crime can skew the data. Regularly keeping up with the news around your child's campus (easy now, thanks to the Web) will give you a more accurate picture of the crime situation.
Visiting the campus and talking to campus security provides insight on how the school approaches campus safety issues. But remember, the campus administrators and safety services can only do so much. If students are proactive about following the above suggestions, their college experience should be a safe one.
