With a new financial structure, SafeWalk is growing

With stable money now provided by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, SafeWalk is increasing outreach and expanding its program to help people get home safely.

Bobby Kunstman, senior associate director of student life and leadership, said SafeWalk used to be supported by UNC’s student government, but, in the fall, their financial affairs moved to the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs.

“SafeWalk, even though we are a self-governing autonomous organization, has been placed in a hierarchy in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs,” said Daniel Salgado, program manager of SafeWalk.

The switch in funding was intentional. Salgado said SafeWalk needed to be directly funded through the University because of the unreliability and lack of support from Student Congress. Congress cut the program’s funding in fall 2014.

“In the past, because SafeWalk didn’t have a guaranteed source of revenue in order to fund operations, their budget fluctuated from year to year and so did their operations,” Kunstman said. “Now that they have the guaranteed levels of support from the vice chancellor’s office and by the Parents Council, they are not running in debt anymore.”

Kunstman and Salgado said the Carolina Parents Council helped support the organization in the past and has continued to support SafeWalk under its new financial structure.

Kunstman said the new financial comfort has allowed those involved in SafeWalk to focus on the growth of the program.

“Because of the more flexible fiscal situation that SafeWalk has been able to fortunately experience in this coming year, as opposed to last year, we’ve been able to do more targeted things — for example, outreach,” Salgado said. “We’ve seen the results of that being manifested in the completion of a very successful spring hiring drive in which we just recently hired 13 new employees for the program.”

Salgado and Kunstman both said SafeWalk plans to have at least four people stationed outside of Davis Library and the Undergraduate Library each night.

SafeWalk provides a dispatch phone line, Kunstman said, so people can call in and have a dispatcher sent to their specific location.

“Let’s say you were in Dey Hall and you call that number,” he said. “The dispatcher will send walkers to come get you over there, and then the walkers will take you to where you live.”

Many students, like first-year Brandon Pham, have used SafeWalk before and value the safety it provides.

“It’s a really good program for students to come out and support each other, and make sure that other people have security going back and forth from their rooms and the library,” Pham said.

Kunstman said students are passionate about SafeWalk and feel the need for there to be safety precautions on campus.

“I think that this organization is very important for the preservation of the campus’s perception of public safety here at UNC,” Salgado said.

“With the renewed fiscal comfort, not only does it give us new grounds to start fresh and build, but we’ve got a great staff now on board and we can experience longevity and growth through the development of our new employees.”

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