Students living in off-campus housing should lobby their towns’ leaders to address safety concerns.
In particular, students should actively call on their towns regarding issues of poor lighting or lack of emergency call boxes.
Just as the Department of Public Safety serves the campus community to address safety concerns, the towns we live in have their own respective offices to address these issues.
However, students might not think to call the town in which they live about these problems.
It is very easy for students to simply feel like temporary residents in their town and not take ownership of the issues they see, such as poor lighting, in their off-campus neighborhoods.
In a successful example of taking ownership, students in off-campus neighborhoods near Church Street and McMasters Street raised their concerns about security to the Town of Chapel Hill.
Working with the police department, the town installed police boxes in the students’ neighborhood to address their security concerns.
Many students avoid certain streets or parking lots when walking back to their off-campus housing because they are poorly lit. Students should raise these issues to their towns’ attention.
Enhancing lighting can be a process that ranges from simply increasing the wattage of the light bulbs to installing new poles.
