With the installation of the No Hokie Left Behind campaign in October, along with the search for Hannah Graham going on just hours away, campus security at Tech has come back into the spotlight.
No Hokies Left Behind, a campaign started by the Virginia Tech Police Department, is a collaborative effort of several organizations in order to raise awareness of student safety. Their message simply states: go with friends, stay with friends and leave with friends. “Stay together; know your limits. If you’re out with each other, know your surroundings,” said Dan Guilliams, an officer who has been with the VTPD for 13 years. “With No Hokies Left Behind we have more blue lights coming up.”There are currently 89 blue light safety phones located all over campus and its boundaries, all of which are connected to a 911 emergency operator.According to Campus Safety and Security data from the Department of Education, Virginia Tech has remained fairly stable in the past few years, with the exception of aggravated assaults. In 2012, the number of reported assaults rose from three to six. This school year, there have already been eight reported assaults, prompting the focus on this campaign. “It’s really important to do things in pairs so that you’re always better situated should something occur, so I think this is a great campaign and I hope the students take it to heart,” said Michael J. Mulhare, the Virginia Tech Director of Emergency Management.
In addition to No Hokies Left Behind, other initiatives such as the LiveSafe app have been working to make their service more available to students.
“Students are reluctant to contact campus security or local law enforcement due to lack of anonymity or ease of access to officials,” explained Jenny Abramson, the CEO of LiveSafe. “We can help universities address these challenges by taking advantage of the fact that everyone is walking around with a phone in their back pocket. If we lower the barriers to communicating about safety, we’ll be able to prevent incidents before they occur.”
LiveSafe presents multiple opportunities for students and other users to react to crime or any emergency. The app includes tools to contact police, give tips to police and even walk home safely with a SafeWalk feature.
“LiveSafe has actually helped out a lot,” Mulhare said. “We added another feature to the app called Emergency Management Information. What that has done is put all of the emergency preparedness information from our website into the fingertips of anyone. I think the best thing is to be well-informed; to have some skillsets for what to do in emergencies.”
In a recent survey of roughly 140 Virginia Tech students, it was found that 68 percent of students had knowledge of No Hokies Left Behind, but only 39 percent of students had heard of LiveSafe.
The same survey found that 66 percent of students feel “very safe” on campus, and 96 percent believe that Tech carries out safety precautions properly.
“Four years at college should be the best years of one’s life,” Abramson said. “In order to reach their potential, people need to feel safe and secure.”
“Virginia Tech is really just as safe as the next campus and that’s always how I felt,” said Emma Goddard, a 2014 graduate of Virginia Tech.
Goddard was just a freshman in high school in 2007 when her older brother Colin became a victim, and a survivor, of the April 16th massacre. Three years later, she made the choice to become a Hokie as well.
“I like the idea of what they’re doing with No Hokies Left Behind,” she said. “I think it’s another facet of campus safety that is really important. There were a few ‘what if’ moments where I felt afraid, but it’s not the thing I chose to dwell on. I don’t think that you should live in fear.”
