Change needed for students safety at night

Julianna Cardinale, Staff member

The campus police at Diablo Valley College is anything but up to par, specifically in the evening. When students are walking to their cars after a night class, there are no police to be found. Students have to walk to their cars looking over their shoulder in fear that someone might try to hurt them.

I don’t know what the campus police’s directive is, but it seems like they only care about giving students tickets for not having parking passes.

In actuality, the main issue should be student safety. When it comes to campus safety, many students are unaware of what DVC offers.

For example, many students do not know that they can call a police officer to escort them to their car. Wouldn’t you think that would be a good thing to know?

But if one student is using this escort system, this takes away a police officer from the rest of the campus. So that’s not really solving the problem, it’s just creating a new one.

According to the daily police reports on campus, more crimes happen during the day time. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the students are safer at night. There are less police officers on campus at night. Two to three to be exact.

We have nine parking lots on campus, not including the overflow lots we have. That isn’t enough police to cover this whole campus if there’s a serious emergency.

I’m a student who has a night class and I do not feel safe when I’m walking to my car, my only defense is the mace that my father gave me. Although the mace is great in case of an emergency, it still doesn’t make me feel safe in anyway. And I’m not the only one who feels this way, “As a student I love having a night class, but I don’t feel safe walking to my car once my class is over,” said sophomore Sasha Rowland, “it would be nice to know that while I’m walking to my car late at night that I am safe, but at the moment I don’t feel that way.”

A change needs to be made.

The police officers on this campus should be patrolling each parking lot when most night classes end and start. This will give the students peace of mind knowing that if something were to happen to them, there is probably a police officer close by. It will also add a degree of safety to this campus, which we do not have. So not only will it give students a safe feeling, but it will also keep the students safe.