(U-WIRE) LINCOLN, Neb. – Your neck hairs are standing up as your eyes dart from side to side scanning your surroundings. And that’s during the daytime when the darkness is not adding yet another level of risk to your across-campus commutes.
Dark corners, or entire square blocks, create campus danger zones with heightened chances of muggings or worse.
A female student was mugged in October while walking home to her sorority house, passing the dark alley near the Wick Alumni Center.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln officials say their hands are tied from increasing lighting because of budget issues.
Home Depot in Lincoln sells outdoor lighting for as low as $9.99 for a 300-watt floodlight fixture. Its top-selling motion sensor light costs $31. Granted, these models are for the ambitious do-it-yourselfer, but somewhere between $9.99 and the pricey industrial grade equipment, there’s got to be an option UNL and the City of Lincoln can afford.
An investment in campus lighting is tantamount to an investment in students’ safety.
More preventative steps to reduce campus crime, such as increased lighting and cameras, provide students with more tools to protect themselves – saving the university money in police or emergency response or possible lawsuits.
University officials have been increasing the presence of technological security measures this year, installing more cameras on campus buildings. But a police or security officer watching a dark spot through a camera is not helping students protect themselves.
Officials also have been passing the buck with another dark campus-area spot: the Centennial Mall between Q and R streets is regulated by city ordinances and beatification issues because the plot is owned by the city and state.
Does the body of a mugged and beaten college woman make the area prettier than a couple of temporary lights until the city pinpoints more permanent lighting options?
City officials have said they don’t want to address lighting issues to the mall until they begin other construction projects related to the area as part of the Downtown Master Plan. It could be another 10 years before anything happens…
In the meantime, we’ll hope the two dark boulder sculptures dropped in the mall grass near R street offer some proof a city beautification project truly is under way. Their aesthetic value, of course, is a matter of artistic interpretation.
Many students have yet to cross the Centennial Mall without being approached or yelled at by one of the transients loitering on the benches or under the trees. During the daytime, these occurrences are just annoyances, but come night, they seem more like dangers.
Under age 50, those aged 12 to 19 years old are most vulnerable to rapes or sexual assaults, according to the yearly Criminal Victimization in the United States report. This group is followed closely by those aged 20 to 34 years.
When those groups most at risk for sexual assaults coincide with the ages of the majority of the campus, there is a lot to lose by not acting to protect students and younger faculty members.
When campus officials set priorities concerning budget items, lighting should rank as high as any other security device. Floodlights might not be as sexy as flashy, high-tech cameras, but students’ lives and safety are always appealing.
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