Annual safety walk identifies areas of concern

Every year, the Utah State University Student Association, or USUSA, teams up with Logan students to identify areas of concern on campus. The group of eight students is typically joined by a member of the campus police, USU’s risk manager, a representative from USU housing and a Logan City official.

Safety walks have taken place on the USU campus annually for five years. During this nighttime walk, students show areas of the USU campus that don’t feel safe.

This year, USUSA Logan Vice President Emily Smilanich, was responsible for this project. In years past, this project was run by the president.

“This year, we identified that we wanted to go through the side of east campus and east campus housing because that area hasn’t been super touched on before,” Smilanich said. “We kind of went in with a mapped area where we were going to hit, but we ended up just stopping a lot of other places that we also thought would be good to talk about.”

Safety concerns on campus include poorly lit sidewalks, potholes and crosswalks needing more signage.

“We had two students who live on campus in the dorms on the east side, and they were able to help us identify a lot of the walkways from the parking lots to the actual dorms themselves that were super dark and not super safe. A student identified that Darwin Avenue, which is on-campus housing, is also very dark and unsafe at night,” Smilanich said.

Reports of what is discussed at the safety walks in years past have not been published to the public, but Smilanich has plans to release the walk’s findings this year.

“I was hoping to work on for the future year, is creating a log of everything that has been identified and things that are work in progress or how much money is going towards that,” Smilanich said.

Over the years, concerns have been resolved from these walks. Major renovations include many safety locks and brand-new lighting poles.

Brody Parker, Logan City’s safety officer and risk manager, also attended this walk and was surprised at how “proactive” students were on these problems.

“The students were wonderful. It was it’s nice to see that they were actually being proactive about it,” Parker said. “They were actually very open to talk about different things and understood areas where you can put lighting here, but then all of a sudden, you’re giving light pollution for all your neighbors around you. They were great to talk to, and they did a wonderful job. It’s great to see that they were being active.”

Logan City does a version of safety walks monthly within different divisions. Parker overlooks all of these walks.

“Every division or every department has their safety inspections around their work areas, like parks and recreation,” Parker said “Every time we have their monthly safety committee meeting. They have to turn in park sheets—that they went through and inspected the parks.”