To the editor, The article “Public UnSafety makes no sense” struck a chord with me. The difficulties we are having as students with Public Safety are even more widespread than the article suggests.
Consider the following situation: when I attempted to obtain visitor passes from the Public Safety office for overnight guests, they informed me that they no longer grant “long-term” visitor passes for safety reasons, which is understandable.
The issue is that because of this policy, they now refuse to grant even overnight passes, which essentially prevents us from having overnight guests, violating our rights as students.
I asked public safety if there was any way I could get overnight passes for my guests, and they eventually decided that I could buy commuter parking passes for their vehicles.
So, long-term parking passes are a safety issue unless we’re willing to pay them enough?
A friend of mine also had problems with public safety when she attempted to appeal a parking ticket she received during fall break.
She was staying on campus during the break, and returned to campus from work late one evening to find the campus deserted, as everyone had gone home for the week.
She knew there were no classes the next morning, and she didn’t feel safe walking alone at night across the empty residential parking lot, so she parked in the Binford lot, closer to her dorm.
The next morning she found a ticket on her car, and when she attempted to appeal it on the grounds that she didn’t feel safe, she was sent a form letter stating that policies are effective on weekends and holidays.
Throughout her dealings with Public Safety, including three more correspondences, the fact she felt unsafe was never addressed. Public Safety never even used the word safe.
This is unacceptable. The article was right; Public Safety is in dire need of improvement. They should be a resource for the students, not an enemy, headache or joke.
Sincerely,
Lauren Smalley, sophomore