With the recent Texas A&M Commerce shooting, campus safety is an issue of which students should be aware.
“We try to stay on top of things that might be broken – doors, locks,” Executive Director of University Housing Thomas Martin said.
“When I talk to parents at Preview Days I tell them the hardest part of my job is protecting their sons and daughters from themselves,” warning that students should not prop open door or allow people to follow them into buildings, he said.
The Texas A&M school system is working on ideas to help make campuses safer while still making campus a comfortable place.
“We do have cameras at basically all the exits in all of the residence halls. We want to know who’s coming in and leaving and those cameras have helped us track down some people,” he continued.
Resident advisers are trained for many situations including fires, reporting incidents and active shooter situations, Director of Residence Life Gina Smith said.
“We train them on disciplinary procedures and how to write incident reports,” Smith said. “We have Student Health and Wellness come in and do some training for them. We have compliance and Title IX do training for us.”
Martin recommends students who live on campus to download the UPD app that a student can use to notify UPD officers if you haven’t made it to a certain destination on time, and a UPD officer will check up to see if you are safe.
Pacience Walker, resident of Lucio Hall, feels safe on campus with the safety precautions already in place.
“Well most of the time we have the campus police here and in order for someone to get into the building they would have to have their key card and they would have to live in the certain building to get in,” Walker said.