Safety measures need revamping

By Staff Editorial     1/29/09 6:00pm

Around 11 p.m. Tuesday, a staff member working in the Humanities Building was assaulted as she made her nightly cleaning rounds (see story, page 1). Her assailant fled on foot, evading the Rice University Police Department and running through campus.Students were oblivious to most of this action, save for the few who saw the police cars crowding the inner loop near the Humanities Building, but it did not have to be this way. We're all aware that following the Virginia Tech massacre two years ago, Rice invested in a new measure of safety, compiling students' cell phone numbers and e-mails in case an emergency were ever to occur on campus. In the past few years, we've received texts informing us of on-campus flooding (Aug. 16, 2007) and strong-arm Sallyport robberies (Nov. 17, 2007), both good uses of the system.

But we are concerned by the university's choice not to employ the Emergency Alert System following Tuesday's assault, considering there was an obviously dangerous suspect on the loose at a time when many students are generally out and about campus. We've griped about this failure to inform before, most notably when a suspect accused of assaulting his girlfriend fled from Rice University police officers near Brown College ("Emergency alert system only works if used," Dec. 5). We'll repeat our complaint: When an obviously hostile escaped suspect is running around campus, the university is obligated to inform students immediately.

But instead of an instant text message warning those on the path to Fondren Library - just yards from the Humanities Building - an e-mail circulated through the all-departments list serve, which goes to just about everyone but students, at a little after 2 a.m., or three hours after the assault. As a result, most students had no idea that the assault had occurred until the next morning.

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Currently, the emergency alert system runs out of the office of Vice President for Administration Kevin Kirby. We would prefer, though, that RUPD have the option of employing the system to directly share necessary information with the student body at risk. That way, no time is lost in exchanging the information with a middle-man, reducing the risk of misinformation and allowing students to make the best possible choice of action.

We feel that the university should also take further steps to make buildings with late-night occupants safer. In this particular case, the Humanities Building doors were programmed to stay open until 11 p.m. in order to accommodate a few classes that take place late Tuesday night. Instead of this system, the university should make every effort to give late-night key card access to students who need it, keeping doors locked and making it vastly more difficult for unwanted people to wander into buildings late at night.

This brings us to another question: Why was this staff member cleaning a building alone at 11 p.m.? There's simply no reason, especially after this incident, for a person to be cleaning alone in the dark, regardless of whether she thought the door was locked or not. Surely students would understand if certain cleaning cycles took place during the day or in the morning hours, especially if staff safety was a concern, so we encourage the schedule-makers to limit the number of nighttime tasks that employees have to complete, especially if they are solitary ones. Fortunately, Facilities, Engineering & Planning has instituted a temporary buddy policy requiring staff members to work in pairs. We fully encourage FE&P to make this change permanent.

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