The Red and Black

And Athens-Clarke County has then in their parks and they are never used in emergencies...only pranks. We had them at my last university, they were only used for non-emergencies. In an era of cell phones, the blue lights are over rated.

Students - be aware of your surroundings at all times (that means not being drunk), ladies don't walk alone at night and everyone know how to defend yourself.

UGA is a terribly unsafe campus. I broke my wrist when my bike tire locked into one of the dangerous drainage grates that are at the entrance to a lot of the decks and by roadsides.

Myers Quad has a few drainage ankle breakers hidden in the grass.

The bridge by the stadium has a rail that doesn't even come to my hip and the fall is sure-death....

It goes on and on like that on this campus.

Adam's priorities are wack.

What a hit piece with a misleading headline!

Even the director of Safe Campuses Now said that the cost of upgrading the call boxes wasn't feasible considering the lack of use the boxes received. Did the Red and Black inquire about statistics as to how many times UGA actually received true emergency calls via the old call boxes?

The Alabama officer even stated that the calls they receive on their call boxes are for directions and vehicle assistance. That's a lot of money being spend just so somebody can call and ask directions. I wonder if the guy commented based solely on information provided by the Red and Black or if he took the time to speak to UGA and get a full perspective.

If the dollar figures given by Jimmy Williamson are correct, he made the correct decision to utilize those resources elsewhere. $30,000 per month to have call boxes so that people can call and ask directions would be ridiculous. The starting salary for a UGA officer is just over $30K. I would rather them put that money into hiring more officers than to spend it on a underutilized resource.

Call boxes had their place prior to every person having a cell phone, but now they are outdated, and to say that not having them is a lack of safety resources is either a lack of journalistic intelligence or honesty or both.

I understand the expenses related to blue light call boxes, and that they may not be needed nearly as much in the age of cell phones, however, not every single person has a cell phone. In my department's building, students frequently work late, and once the main office is closed at 5 there is no emergency phone available. We had a pay phone that got yanked a few years ago, and now cell phones are it for students. How is that safe?

The removal of blue-light boxes due to the increase in cell phone use is understandable, but not completely thought over. What if a person is mugged, injured, and robbed of their cell phone? That blue-light box could be really useful to them! What if a horrible coincidence arises and someone is being attacked, chased, or has been raped, and they either 1. don't have their cell with them or 2. their cell's battery has died? A blue-light box has the potential to save a life in a circumstance like that, and isn't one life saved on campus worth the cost of these boxes?

I would not even have considered going to UGA had I known that before. I thought there was a law about campuses and callboxes... every single one I have been to has the bluelight towers all around. I even live around a college town, and it is not uncommon for the boxes to be on streets that are not really on campus, but because they are streets students will walk down to get downtown. It also makes the normal resident of the town feel safer, because anyone can use them. UVM has them, it seems, no more than about 100 feet apart in some areas. BU had them going down the trails that were off the beaten track, and probably rarely used at all.

Money should not be an issue when it comes to safety of a campus. Most schools with boxes also allow students to call from any box to have a safety officer escort them where they are going (good for women alone at night time). It's there for prevention, UGA should not wait until there are enough crimes happening around campus to make the boxes 'cost effective'.

I now wish like hell I had taken my thirty thousand a year somewhere else.