Emily Russell, Guest Writer~
Lynchburg College is actively taking measures to ensure safety in their residence halls.
LC director of campus security, Bob Driskill, and director of residence life, Kristen Cooper, explained the safety measures that are taken in order to make LC residence halls as safe as possible.
“All doors are card-accessed to keep unwanteds out,” Driskill said. Throughout the day, RAs, the hall director and campus security monitor the halls in order to ensure students are safe. “RAs and Hall Directors work with us and consort with us,” Driskill said.
As well as the RAs, hall directors and security officers, Cooper said, “in addition to those levels we have another on-call structure that includes a dean on call, a minister on call, and a counselor on call.” Cooper added, “There are a lot of personnel that are available and able to respond to situations.”
Both Driskill and Cooper mentioned that there are cameras in the residence halls, but the amount are limited.
Driskill explained that before card access, college personnel had to monitor every person that came in and out of residence halls, but thanks to 24/7 locked and card-accessed doors, those things can be monitored in other ways. “We are able to identify who scans in and out of a building, we are able to shut off access to certain individuals or to the hall itself if we were to have to go down that path,” Cooper said.
Driskill and Cooper stressed the importance of the LiveSafe app. According to the LiveSafe app website, it “gives companies and universities an immediate path to communicating safety information to constituencies. And it delivers peer-to-peer and self-service tools to help everyone in the community stay safe, in every day and high-risk scenarios.”
Students can report things that they believe are suspicious directly to security through the app or by a telephone call. Cooper and Driskill encourage students to report anything that they feel looks or seems out of place within their residence halls in order to maintain the safety of themselves and their hallmates.
When asked to give safety advice to LC residents, Driskill and Cooper both stressed for students to lock their doors, keep their eyes open and to report safety concerns.
Students can download the free LiveSafe app through the Apple App Store as well as Google Play.