​Saving the lone student the long walk

For most undergraduates, Duke’s three campuses are supposed to be home, from waking up in twin or full XL beds to late walks back from socializing or the libraries. But in recent months, students have found themselves less than certain of their safety after a rash of crime has troubled campus from February’s armed robbery on Central Campus to just four days ago when a student was held at gunpoint in the roundabout leading up to the Chapel.

With additional difficulties using services meant to help getting around campus, especially late at night, we have to bemoan several aspects of living on campus that really should be safe bets.

At almost a thousand acres of campus between East, West and Central, there is a lot of land to manage and a lot to worry about. While we understand that reducing crime to zero on any college campus is impossible, the duty remains to mitigate it when feasible proposals are on the table. We applaud measures taken this year to clear trees between the West Campus bus stop and Edens and to reevaluate security officer presence all over campus, but clearly holes in coverage still exist with crimes committed in areas that are hardly off the beaten track. While the idea to fence or wall off our campus is hardly serious for what it would accomplish at the cost of literally closing us off from our context in Durham and hopefully remains a Trump-esque fantasy, we can identify several changes to cover campus more effectively.

Students traveling down campus roads alone are much more likely to become victims of crime than when they travel in pairs or are able to avoid walking altogether through campus transportation services. To save the lone student, Duke once had a University SafeWalks program run by students that offered callable walking companions on weekend nights. Being in sight of a blue light or in possession of your cell phone does no good unless you are able to use them. The SafeWalks program that partnered with the Women’s Center or a similar conceivable program with volunteer cars on-call should be revived and available for students to use.

That said, these programs would be largely unnecessary if the already existing Duke Vans program would improve its service coverage. While Duke Vans usually works perfectly well for traveling between West, East and Central bus stops after buses have stopped running, students inevitably find that sensible pickup requests are denied. Buses operate until 2 and 4 a.m. on different nights, but darkness falls several hours earlier especially in the winter months. For whatever reason, Duke Vans operates only when Duke Transit is not in service though it takes specific calls from 5 p.m. to 6:45 a.m. Additionally, their website describes pick-up transportation as available from “on-campus locations” and “campus and residential destinations” but has been known to turn down students trying to return from far-off buildings like Gross Hall and Devil’s Den. The cost of running Duke Vans to the extent that students need it given their patterns of moving around campus should not be prohibitive to making these coverage expansions happen.

Student Government this week passed a resolution supporting administrative installation of security cameras on campus near residential areas—a move which we hope will increase students' sense of security at least by dorms. The issue of campus security persists and every new DukeAlert about crime brings questions of how it could have been prevented. Given how students treat our campus like home, priority must be given to ensuring complete coverage of late-night needs to decrease student vulnerability to criminal acts.