Emergency call boxes rarely used

The University’s emergency call boxes located around campus are meant to be a resource students can go to for immediate help — but they are rarely used for legitimate safety reasons.

Randy Young, spokesman for UNC’s Department of Public Safety, said the boxes are used only a handful of times a year and on average used once every few months for situations where students are in danger.

“Generally we don’t see a lot of use,” Young said.

But he said this does not mean the boxes are not valuable. Young said it is hard to quantify the number of crimes stopped before they happen.

“We feel it does effectively reflect a security or police presence on campus as a deterrent to crime,” he said.

Gaylan Bishop, UNC Electric Distribution Systems manager, said in an email that maintenance is provided by Telecom in a contract with the University. He said there are 112 call boxes on campus that cost $6,900 to maintain and monitor per year, and the cost of powering the boxes is about $2,690.

He said the company is in the process of installing LED lights in the units which will reduce the cost to about $2,041 per year.

David Hill, the director of SafeWalk, said the lights, which are on top of the boxes, also increase the perception of safety around campus.

Hill said the lights are used to increase safety in areas that are not well-lit — but there are still dark areas on campus.

“I definitely think they’re an important measure to making sure students are safe at night,” Hill said.

Hill said SafeWalk is a strong advocate of the emergency boxes and the group tries to incorporate them into their new employee training. He said just having the lights on campus as a resource is vital to student safety.

“The more safety resources available to the students, the safer they’ll be,” he said.

To combat the darker areas around campus, Electric Distribution Systems is going on a walking tour of campus on Nov. 19 to see where lights need to be installed. The department welcomes input from the community on areas that need to be lit.

At some colleges and universities such as Stony Brook University, officials have given students the option of downloading “blue light phone” applications, which allow students to quickly alert University police if they are endangered.

Tyler Jacon, chairman of the Executive Branch’s Student Safety and Security Committee, said there have been discussions of an alternative to the lights, but student government and UNC officials have yet to make concrete plans.

He also said expanding the call boxes off campus would be something to look into. Jacon said students who live off campus are more likely to be in danger at night where they live, rather than on campus.

He said putting more call boxes on campus would be an inefficient use of funds.

“It would deplete financial resources that would be more effectively used in other programs,” he said.

university@dailytarheel.com