THERE ARE many times at this University where I've felt slightly uncomfortable. These are generally times when I'm walking -- or running -- around alone at night in sparsely populated areas. Frequently during these times I've looked around, found the nearest blue phone, and remembered the safety speech I received as a first-year, where I was told that if I ever felt threatened walking home at night I could press the "emergency" button and talk to a University police officer. If I was being chased, I could press a button and run away and, when I didn't answer, a police car would be dispatched to investigate the situation. There's just one problem with this scenario: The "emergency" buttons don't actually summon the University Police.
I began testing the blue phones this past weekend after I heard from a friend that the police didn't in fact respond to them. I tested three individual phones, and one series of phones. The individual phones were behind the Lawn, on Piedmont street, and in the parking lot behind Kerchoff hall. All were tested between the hours of nine p.m. and 12 p.m., and all my calls were answered promptly, politely, and calmly by University Police, but none elicited the dispatching of a police car when I did not respond. I also pushed two lights in a row behind Scott Stadium. One began blinking, but no cops ever showed up.
It is a common understanding in the University, garnered from the safety talks first year, that if one pushes the emergency button and does not respond the police will dispatch a car. I wanted to make sure this wasn't just a huge misunderstanding between the students and the University Police, so I called the police and asked exactly what situations will result in the sending of a car.
The officer I spoke to informed me that the police officer who answers a blue phone will dispatch a car if the situation is deemed suspicious. When I asked what constituted a suspicious situation the officer replied, "If there is no answer on the other end of the phone that would certainly be suspicious."
It is not so much the fact that the University Police did not respond when I tested the phones that bothered me, as the fact that I had been told they would. While it's pretty clear that 99 percent of the time someone pushing the "emergency" button is going to be a prank and not a real emergency, the same logic applies to fire alarms, and the fire department still responds to every single one of those. At the beginning of our first year the University Police gave us a promise that they would be there if we pushed the emergency button and didn't answer -- in a school where our word is our honor, this is a promise they should keep.
By not keeping this promise, the University Police, who are here to keep University students safe, are potentially putting these same students at risk. If one were in an emergency situation, knowing that the police would not show up if the button were pushed could be imperative information. It also might make one reevaluate whether to push the button at all. The rule for blue phones is that one will always be within eyesight, and so far as I could see, this held true. Just because a blue phone is within eyesight though, doesn't mean it is within easy access. A good number of the blue phones, especially those around the Copeley/Darden/Park area are located slightly off the path, so that one would have to go out of one's way -- even off the more lit and populated path -- to push them. In many places getting to two in a row is pretty unrealistic.
"I regard blue phones as a good preventative measure, a step in the direction of risk reduction, but they need to function properly to provide any of these benefits," said Rachel Forse, co-chair of the Sexual Assault Leadership Council. "The phones need to be more than a selling point to parents during tours of the University."
The blue phones are helpful for many things: You can call a friend with them if you've been locked out of your dorm; they provide a direct line to the police should you ever need one, but they seem pretty impractical as a safety device even were they to work as the police promised. When the police are not dispatching cars in situations where they promised they would though, it becomes pretty clear that when it comes to blue phones and safety, it's only the thought that counts.
Margaret Sessa-Hawkins' column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at msessahawkins@cavalierdaily.com
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