Emergency blue light phones provide students with peace of mind
By: Alexis Morgan
Personal safety is important to pay attention to, especially at a university. At Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff, Arizona, the campus utilizes an emergency blue light phone system for students to stay safe. Prospective students and their parents are always looking for a university that works to keep everyone free from harm.
According to the 2017 annual Clery Report, there are more than one hundred sixty emergency phones throughout NAU’s campus. Each one is in view of another. By pushing the button on one of these, it is the same as dialing 911.
The idea is that students on campus can push the lights along their walk if they are feeling threatened in order to alert the NAU Police Department which direction they are going so they do not have to stop and wait if they feel they are in imminent danger.
NAU Police officer Kevin Duffy said, “The purpose of the blue lights is that if you’re at one you can see the next blue light phone. I think that is a huge deterrent for crime because they are everywhere on campus. From parking garages to open spaces.”
Also according to Officer Duffy, the number one reason they get dispatched to a blue light is because someone is presses it when there is no actual threat. He said, “Some people press it to joke around, that’s kind of our number one response to those unfortunately. I have had a couple situations where there has actually been a real emergency, like a fight.”
Manager of the NAU Office of Emergency Management Marc Burdiss said, “Some of the older yellow box dials were installed 20/30 years ago. Some of the latest blue phones have been installed in the past couple months. It is an ongoing process to keep the blue phones updated and refreshed.” Burdiss also added that, “Our blue phones probably get used about 4-6 times a week during the school year, and not necessarily just for emergencies.”
The phones have been around for quite some time, but they are constantly getting updated and this pulls from multiple budgets on campus according to Burdiss.
Burdiss acknowledged the fact that, “There is debate about whether the phones are useful, as they were instituted at a time when students didn’t have cell phones. The uniqueness of Flagstaff is that we are a dark sky community, and as opposed to other campuses our campus is darker than most. Students don’t feel unsafe but the blue phones are an added peace of mind.”
Just having the phones around can potentially deter crime from happening according to Officer Duffy.
When it comes to personal safety, Officer Duffy says that, “Signing up for NAU alert is very important. If a student is on campus then they will get an alert in their phone about any imminent danger. Never walk alone, you are more likely to be attacked if you are by yourself. And don’t wear earbuds or headphones so that you are aware of your surroundings.”
Personal safety can be achieved by staying alert and Burdiss said, “When you get into a stressful situation, trying to fumble and getting a phone out of your pocket to dial 911 is harder than just running over and pushing a big, red button on a blue phone.”
Every year NAU holds a safety walk in its first semester. This walk is about identifying problem areas on campus where people feel unsafe and reporting them to see what the university can do to ease their concerns with areas deemed unsatisfactory.
The blue lights are a staple of NAU’s campus and are highlighted when potential students come to visit for tours. As a selling point for the university, it is important that tour guides talk about them when people come to visit.
Sydney Clemann, a senior at NAU who used to give tours on campus said, “The blue light system was one of my favorite things to talk about when I gave tours because it calmed a lot of the worried parents. I was also speaking as a young, female, so they were glad to know that I felt safe.”
There will be four new phones on campus once the honors building construction is completed. There are seven new phones in the work according to Burdiss, he said, “They’re expensive, so it’s not like we find out there’s a new model and bring them out. Plus our new standards for blue phones require 24/7 access to power. It’s a rather expensive proposition. We have an ongoing project to try and get seven new phones, and this would run us about $250,000.”
According to Burdiss, he believes that the benefits provided by the blue phone system is worth the cost and upkeep. He said, “Having the blue lights to guide people down walkways on campus, the students have told us they get this peace of mind, and so I don’t foresee us ever getting rid of them.”
In the past the phones have proved useful in dangerous events. One example Burdiss talked about was, “Two years ago we had a suspect with a knife on campus that had held up and robbed a student, and the description of the suspect went via the NAU alert system, and somebody called in on a blue phone and said they saw the person.”
The safety of students on every campus is important to everyone, and it is systems like the blue light emergency phones that help deter crime and keep everyone feeling safe and comfortable. The system is always being updated and added to, and as of now there are no plans to get rid of them, only to keep expanding, according to Burdiss.
