The Reveille asked LSU students across different years, majors and backgrounds about their thoughts on campus safety and what changes, if any, they would like to see implemented.
Girls Rides at LSU is one of the prominent safety organizations on campus, offering free transportation to women on campus to as far as the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. The group has been around for a while, but has only recently become an official student organization. Junior sociology major Belle Porché serves as the secretary.
“Being on such a big campus you wanna make sure that you really surround yourself with people that uplift you and then also surround yourself with women, of course, because a lot of things can happen on a college campus,” Porché said.
Safety was a huge priority for Porché when she was searching for schools. One of the things that made her nervous about LSU was the lack of lighting on campus in some areas. To fix this, she suggested adding a blue light security system.
These systems comprise towers illuminated by blue lights equipped with an emergency phone able to contact law enforcement within seconds. Other regional universities like Southern University, University of Louisiana Lafayette and Tulane University have all implemented blue light systems.
Mailyn Harris, a sophomore studying mass communication, serves as an officer for Girls Rides. She believes that campus is not unsafe, but precautions should still be taken.
“If I was walking somewhere at night obviously I’d take someone with me or I’d walk towards campus,” Harris said.
LSU’s foremost security feature is the LSU Shield app, which has safety features accessible to all LSU students with the click of a button. Students can do everything from request safe transport from an LSU police officer to using the FriendWatch feature to monitor a student’s walk and call emergency contacts and the police if not in a certain location within a certain time period.
“I do feel safe at LSU because most of the time people mind their own business and there is police patrolling all around campus,” freshman interior design major Kayla Montgomery said.
Girls Rides President Adriana Caldcleugh, pre-veterinary medicine sophomore, believes the key to safety at LSU is to spread more awareness and be honest with students about the true dangers that come with living on a college campus.
She emphasized the importance of teaching incoming freshmen about the red zone, the time between late summer and Thanksgiving where the risk for sexual assault is higher on college campuses.
Caldcleugh also believes that to ensure a safer LSU, there has to be a better relationship between students and law enforcement. To improve this relationship and increase familiarity of students’ options, Girls Rides has been working with LSU law enforcement to offer free self-defense courses for students.
“Calling a cop for any reason is so intimidating, so like I totally understand,” Caldcleugh said. “To this day I haven’t had a bad experience with an LSU cop. There’s always the thought of, ‘Is this something I should take to the cops?’, but if you are asking that question the answer is probably yes.”
Some students feel confident they are safe at LSU, especially because of the university’s police department.
“We are literally the gated community of Baton Rouge,” Nevaeh Rhine, an undeclared freshman, said. “If you are on LSU’s campus you are fine. We have our own police station that will be here within 10 minutes.”
The LSU police are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They can be contacted at 225-578-3231.
