The Voice
The Colonnade staff thinks it’s a shame that SNAP, the safe transportation service that takes students to and from spots on campus after dark, is no longer providing its services.
According to Public Safety, SNAP had been receiving a low number of phone calls from students wanting to take advantage of the service. Maybe that’s because a lot of students didn’t know about SNAP, or they didn’t know what number to call when they wanted to use SNAP. We think the service needed to be advertised more around campus. It’s a great thing to have on any campus, but we don’t think enough students at Georgia College & State University knew that it really existed. Sure, we heard about it when we came to orientation before our freshmen year, but since then, we haven’t heard much about it. Public Safety also claims that they “tried to advertise” with The Colonnade. We’d like to know when.
We think SNAP, which stands for Student Night Auxiliary Patrol, is needed on our campus. Some parts of GC&SU are very dark and creepy at night, especially over by Russell Library. Who knows who could be lurking? Oh, and walking to and from the Arts & Sciences computer lab in the dark can be pretty scary when there aren’t many people around.
Public Safety says that students at GC&SU are responsible enough to travel in the dark without help from SNAP and that we know to travel in groups. Students often travel in groups, and yeah, that’s pretty safe–to travel in packs. But what about a freshman girl living in Napier Hall who has to go to the library one night? Is she supposed to walk all the way from Napier to the library in the dark by herself? That’s not very safe. Sometimes students have to travel solo at night. And we think SNAP needs to be available for those students to call.
This past weekend, a mother of a prospective student of GC&SU asked one of us if our campus is safe at night and if we felt safe. We bragged and went on and on about this service the university provides that takes students back and forth to places on campus. The mother was so impressed. (We were bragging about SNAP.) Scratch that, huh?
Getting rid of SNAP makes GC&SU seem like it has its priorities in the wrong order. Safety comes first. It shouldn’t be one of the first things to go when there’s a budget cut. GC&SU needs to take better care of its students than this.
Those blue lights should provide enough safety for our campus, according to Public Safety. We don’t agree. It’s probably extremely rare that someone will happen to be near one of those blue lights if he or she is being attacked or assaulted. And if someone is being abducted, those blue lights are going to do diddlysquat–the victim will be long gone by the time Public Safety gets to the blue light. And who has time to push the button on those lights when you’re being attacked anyway?
The Colonnade staff doesn’t agree with Public Safety’s decision to eliminate SNAP. There are too many things such as rape, abductions and robberies happening on campuses across the country. If it can happen anywhere else, it can happen in the little town of Milledgeville, Ga., on the campus of GC&SU. SNAP made students feel safe on this campus–well, students that knew about SNAP. Students didn’t have to fear walking across campus by themselves–they could just call SNAP if they were uncomfortable with walking in the dark. Not anymore.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Feb 7 2003. Filed under Our Voice.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
