Dear Panther Community,
I appreciate the students and staff that joined us on Tuesday night for the Town Hall to discuss safety in our residence halls. Over the past 48 hours, our senior leaders have huddled quickly to develop immediate actionable steps. Although the Chief Operating Officer communicated these steps by email this afternoon, I also want to reflect on sentiments from the town hall.
As President, I appreciate the desire of the community to have a balance between facility/community changes and law enforcement to create an environment that is and feels safe and secure. Although these immediate actions address some of our current challenges, we also have longer term plans that provide new walking paths through campus, better landscaping and lighting solutions for our walkways and parks, new call boxes, and more secure access control to our buildings.
From our Safety Town Hall, several students spoke very passionately regarding our campus which allowed us to receive many productive suggestions. Here are some immediate actions to address what we heard:
- We will be aligning our shuttle services to coincide with University Library hours starting today for the Blue, Green, and Purple lines.
- We are assessing nighttime front door access to our Student Center to determine whether access should be limited to students at a certain time.
- We will conduct an assessment of residence halls, including security staffing, access and control and safety monitoring. We will also be providing additional training for our residence hall assistants to support our student workers.
- We are expanding the university’s escort service and will continue to publicize the police and safety resources available to students, faculty and staff on a new operations website and through safety communications campaigns.
As President, the safety of our student body is very personal for me and I will continue to make safety our university’s top priority. The university administrative team and I are committed to keeping the GSU community informed as we continue to make improvements across our operations.
All the best, stay safe, and Go Panthers!
