Another Seattle University student was mugged within blocks of campus this week, and it has this editorial board feeling as if not enough is being done to protect students living off campus.
After all, these students do represent a majority of the population at Seattle U, with 57 percent of undergraduates living somewhere other than residence halls or one of the university's alternative housing options like the Murphy Apartments.
In fact, certain areas in the neighborhood are thick with Seattle U students living in apartments and rental homes. As Public Safety reported in a campus crime advisory about the most recent mugging, the student was walking on 11th Avenue south of campus. This area, like several others surrounding campus, is a corridor filled with Seattle U student residences. Walking on those streets just before usual class times is almost like walking on an extension of one of the malls on campus.
Despite the presence of so many students, that street and others like it are dark, isolated and unpatrolled.
While safety escorts and the NightHawk are valuable services, they are not well adapted for students who daily walk a few blocks to home. Wait times for these services are typically prohibitive.
Instead of expanding these existing services, Seattle U should invest in creative and new ways to make the neighborhood safer. Off-campus patrols, community outreach, working with landlords or even placing lights or blue-light emergency phones off campus are all steps that might make our neighborhood a safer place to live.
True, much of personal safety relies on exactly the individual to take appropriate measures. And on an urban campus, crime is to be expected.
But Seattle U is a social justice university, one that has the power to change its community by making it a safer place to live.
Reach The Spectator editorial board at opinion@su-spectator.com.
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