Walking around MU’s campus at night, you become familiar with the sight of little blue lights in the distance. Those glowing blue beacons are emergency phones, meant to be run to and pressed in emergencies.
MU prides itself on these lights as a feature of what makes campus safe. Speakers mention them at Summer Welcome. The Department of Residential Life’s website presents them as a solution to campus safety on its “Movin’ to Mizzou” FAQ page.
“If you are walking and feel you are in danger or something doesn’t seem right, find an Emergency Phone (located all over campus and identifiable by the blue light) and call MUPD,” the page reads.
But there is one problem with these emergency beacons: Several are not working. During the annual Safety Walk, meant to find flaws in safety on campus, participants found three of them did not contact emergency services when the buttons were pressed.
“The thing about the blue lights is, they are, I would say, probably less than five times used a year, especially in Greektown, which is honestly kind of surprising,” Missouri Students Association President Sean Earl [said](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2016/10/4/safety-walk-reveals-three-broken-emergency-beacons/).
In reality, the blue lights have been pressed at least 20 times since the beginning of this school year. Every push of a button has the potential to help someone in danger. When they aren’t functioning, it puts students at risk.
Casey Frost, director of Student Services, an MSA executive department that helped organize the Safety Walk, wasn’t even aware that the blue lights were discovered to be broken during the event.
These emergency phones are heralded by MU as a solution to campus safety. If this is the case, why is this not being taken more seriously?
MUPD says these emergency phones are tested every month to make sure they are functioning when needed. If the safety lights are found to be dysfunctional at such a high frequency, it presents a safety risk on campus. Those are three emergency phones that if someone pressed while in danger, help would not have come. Three is three too many.
The physical safety of students should be the top priority of this university. If the blue light emergency phones are key to keeping students safe, they should be maintained carefully and consistently. No emergency phone should be broken when a student is in need.
If for some reason these blue lights are no longer a solution to keeping us safe on campus, the university must identify another alternative. Campus is dark and poorly lit at night, something else the Safety Walk highlighted, and the emergency lights are supposed to be a beacon in that darkness. You’re supposed to be able to have one in sight at all times. Without functioning emergency phones and no presented alternatives, it is hard for us to feel that our university cares about our safety on this campus.