Better hope you don’t get mugged anytime soon: that emergency phone you’re running to probably won’t be working because, after months of delay, the campus emergency phone system remains mostly inoperable. Georgetown needs to keep its promise to the campus community and fix the emergency call box system.
In the summer of 2003, the Emergency Preparedness Program decided to update Georgetown’s network of blue-lighted, emergency call boxes (ECBs), which provide direct contact to Department of Public Safety officers on campus, to keep up with the demands of a growing campus, according to Vice President for University Safety Dave Morell.
Though the older central areas of campus had sufficient ECBs, newer campus expansions like the Southwest Quad did not have sufficient coverage, nor did off-campus areas like the LXR dormitory or N and Prospect streets. The University ordered 57 new vertical ECBs from Vandal-Proof Products Inc. at an estimated cost of $80,000, with 23 intended to cover these extended areas and 34 to replace the older, out-dated models already in use. New ECBs have been placed everywhere from LXR and Alumni Square to the tennis courts and on N street. This expansion was scheduled for completion by September 30, 2004. As of February 2005, the project remains unfinished.
Only some of the new ECBs have been installed, and the older phones have not yet been replaced. Morell attributes this delay partially to tardiness in the delivery of equipment and partially to the standard delays of construction processes, but six months is too long.
Even more worrisome is the fact that the newly installed ECBs are not yet activated, providing no service to the community. They remain entombed in their black plastic wrappers, a waste of University resources and useless for students.
Even if not all of the new boxes have been delivered, those that have been installed should be connected to DPS as soon as possible instead of merely acting as blue night-lights.
Though DPS only receives about ten calls a month from the ECBs on campus, Morell rightly notes that “if an emergency were to happen these things would become priceless.”
Call boxes are standard on nearly all college campuses in the U.S., but students at Georgetown who might turn to a characteristic blue light for help find none. These boxes provide no benefit to the community in their current state. It is imperative that the new call boxes be removed from their plastic and connected to DPS as soon as possible.
