Two UNM facets have been recognized for their continuous efforts to improve campus safety.
Safe Campus announced UNM’s University Communication and Marketing, as well as the Dean of Students Office, were rated 10th in the nation on the Safe Campus Top 25 list for 2016.
According to its website, Safe Campus and the National Campus Safety Summit, is the “premier national conference on university safety” being held in Las Vegas from Feb. 24 through Feb. 26.
Safe Campus chooses their honorees based on “execution, by providing concrete examples and case studies of innovative campus safety initiatives,” and “provid(ing) actionable insight that you can immediately apply to improve safety.”
The top 25 are chosen out of 4,706 U.S. college or university administrative departments, according to their website.
UNM Dean of Students Tomás Aguirre said it’s great to be named 10th amongst names such as Santa Barbara and MIT, adding that student safety has always been a large focus at UNM.
“We don’t really need to get all the publicity for it. It’s nice when we do but, you know, we’re just trying to get the job done at this point,” Aguirre said.
Aguirre said that a comfortable and safe University setting is key to students’ college experience.
“Student safety is always going to be top priority at any campus, you can’t really support student success without student safety. I mean, they go hand in hand,” he said. “If a student doesn’t feel safe or a student isn’t safe, they’re not going to succeed”
Tim Dvorak, a senior liberal arts major, said UNM is headed in the right direction in terms of campus safety.
“I think they are doing a pretty good job. I mean, (LoboAlerts) go to your phone, to everybody’s e-mail, so they’ve got different platforms going,” he said.
Dvorak also said students have a role to play in making campus safer in general.
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“It always seems to be someone is trying to grope someone or it can get even more escalatory, as like rape or something else, which is absolutely awful,” he said. “I think everybody needs to be aware of what’s going on around campus.”
Aguirre said one of the broader safety concerns on campus currently being addressed has been sexual violence, in addition to the other challenges that come with being an open campus. Aguirre named LoboRESPECT and other models as one of the top efforts being implemented by the University to address campus safety.
The LoboRESPECT Advocacy center, a physical space where students can go for support and resources, had a powerful opening last week, Aguirre said.
“Because now students have what we call a ‘first stop,’ you know, a phone number they can call or place where they can go to, where they can get support in moments of crisis,” he said.
LoboRESPECT does a good job of bringing the different shareholders together even though UNM is a big campus with multiple branch campuses, he said.
Looking toward the future, Aguirre said UNM is currently working on a way to measure the results of these efforts.
“We need to implement some sort of campus climate survey and do that on an annual basis because that will give us more concrete numbers that we can look at,” he said.
It will also gives those in charge of student safety a better sense of how the students feel and if they know what they need to be safe, he said.
"Do they know who and where to report it, in case something happens,” he said. “We have to focus on the things we can control, not the things that we can’t control.”
There are also talks of UNM possibly hosting a regional conference for campus safety, according to Aguirre.
“We feel like we’ve sort of become a leader in this area because of a lot of the efforts that we’ve taken on here on campus,” he said.
Aguirre said that all the work done so far has been the labor of many dedicated people.
“I think whatever success we experience as an institution, it’s always important to recognize that it’s a collective effort,” he said. “It’s really a team effort.”
Matthew Reisen is a staff reporter for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
