Night safety is an ever-present issue on college campuses. The goal of our project is to supplement the current safety system on campus to provide a feeling of safety along with actual safety measures to students on campus. These goals in addition to interviews with outside entities allowed us to identify the key stakeholders in our project.
Key stakeholders:
College Students and Their Families: Our primary stakeholders, and the persons directly supported by our project, are students that feel unsafe on college campuses. We are focusing on improving the actual and perceived safety of these students to make campus at night a more accessible and safe space. Within this group, we recognize that women and non-binary students are at greater risk of feeling and being unsafe, as are other minority groups. Additionally, families of students want to ensure students are safe while away from home.
College Campus Police: Campus police officers respond to injury/safety calls on college campuses, and would therefore be interested in solving a common problem. Since our solution would be supplementing the current safety assets on campus, Public Safety will be invested in how our potential solution will mesh with their current safety precautions.
College Administrators: College campuses are a primary stakeholder in our project as we hope to provide a solution that will make their college safer at night for their students. This would not only be beneficial for the college in terms of protecting their students but also would serve as a selling point for their college as they are demonstrating a concern for their current and incoming students.
Interviewed Parties:
Lafayette College Public Safety: As the active safety authority on our campus, Public Safety provided our team with a substantial amount of information regarding the blue light emergency phone system’s utilization rate as well as the department’s general approach to campus safety.
Lafayette College Facility Operations: The Facility Operations department provided background about the implementation of the blue light emergency phone system and the circumstances which motivate the department to supplement the existing system with additional phones.
Lafayette College Psychology Department: Our team reached out to the head of the Psychology Department and was directed toward several pieces of literature exploring the perception of safety and how we can quantify that perception.