Do you know what’s happening on your campus?
When crime happens on campus, students want to know about it, but the variety of ways this information is sent to students can cause confusion.
Cap Alert, Big Voice, and the safety bulletin are just some of the ways Public Safety and the administrators tell students of crimes or suspicious activities.
Following Public Safety’s removal last week of a suspected perpetrator in two sexual assault cases from the second floor of the library, some students have questions about why Cap Alert wasn’t used. Sophomore Diana Crandall, a tutor at CELT, is one of those students.
“I think [the Cap Alert System] should’ve been used after that guy got escorted out. I looked at the books he was reading, DNA Analysis and Recovering Evidence, and our boss said that he is currently being investigated for two sexual assaults,” Crandall said.
Junior Cindy Carr (a member of the Chimes editorial staff) also recently had a run-in with suspicious activity that did not warrant a Cap Alert.
“Around 3 a.m. my friends had just walked me home from the apartments, and they came inside my commons for just a few minutes and then they left. “They came back about two minutes later and said that they saw some man that they thought was trying to into the commons. They said he was a shorter and he was wearing a gray toboggan hat, and either a black hoodie or black Northface jacket. They said they saw him trying to look into the windows of the commons and rattling the door handles to see if the doors were unlocked,” Carr said.”
“When Public Safety came, they looked around the area, and they even said they went into the woods. They said they might’ve heard someone running in the woods, but they weren’t sure, and they didn’t see anything. Public Safety talked to me and I filled out a witness statement.”
Nichole Johnson is the director of media relations and communications at Capital, and is part of the team that decides when which method should be used to spread breaking news and alerts.
“These decisions are made by multiple people, from the responding officer, to the chief of police, to the university council,” Johnson said.
“We know decisions must be made quickly, but this can be a case by case basis. If something happens on or near campus that presents a potential risk or threat, but not an immediate one requiring urgent action, the university relies on the safety bulletin to help keep people informed.”
The safety bulletin can be found at www.capital.edu/safety. This is where students find information that Johnson and others deem important for the campus to be aware of, but not “urgent”. Students can subscribe to receive email updates when the bulletin has a new posting.
“Every time we update the safety bulletin, we consider it campus news. So we create a news item on the News and Events page — www.capital.edu/news —to let people know the safety bulletin has been updated. The first paragraph of the news item links back to the latest safety bulletin entry,” Johnson said.
The suspicious person in CELT did make it onto the safety bulletin, as did a notification about a bike theft in Troutman Hall, complete with pictures of the suspect.
“Schools use text messages in a variety of ways. Some use it for announcing events, or updates about snow days, but Capital only uses it as an emergency notification tool. It has to be an ongoing, life-threatening situation that can disrupt campus, or an imminent weather threat, like a tornado warning in Franklin County,” Johnson said. “If we used texts for every safety bulletin, students would get so many they may become desensitized to it.”
Johnson encourages students to check the safety bulletin often and to subscribe to the web alerts.
