By RAEGAN NEUFELD
Tiger Media Network
FHSU’s Student Government Association discussed general safety at Thursday’s meeting, with a focus on emergency preparedness from guest speaker Scott Cason.
Cason, who works as Chief Communications Officer of University Communications, also serves on the Critical Incident Policy Group (CIPG), which coordinates the Rave Mobile Safety messages sent to students in emergency situations.
“There’s 10,600 contacts in our database,” Cason said. “When we send out a message, we reach through text, email and voicemail.”
According to Cason, the system is driven by the contact information students provide on Workday.
“The last event we had, which was the person on the run from the law, we sent out some alerts about that,” he said. “If you didn’t receive one of those three forms, I encourage you to get back into Workday and check and see if your information is correct.”
A student’s information could be incorrect because of how they entered their phone number. Cason said Workday will only take a string of numbers rather than three sets of numbers separated with hyphens.
Changes can be made to a student’s contact information by going to their “Contact” page under their Workday profile.
Cason also spoke about upcoming CIPG training to make emergency preparedness on campus more comprehensive.
“We’ve got our emergency plan on the web, but it’s in about 10 different places in pieces,” he said. “We need to get that all consolidated. We also need to have some items that are password-protected because if someone wants to do us harm, we don’t want that person or persons to know how we’re going to respond to certain things.”
Other new aspects of campus safety include training for new staff and faculty, as well as safety and security meetings for both residential and academic buildings. Cason said he hopes those meetings will begin next fall.
SGA President Ella Burrows provided additional safety information during her executive report with an update from the Faculty Senate. She reported that the university received a bid for security cameras in residential buildings for $50,000. The assistant vice presidents of the university are discussing the decision to act on this bid.
“They are trying to see if this is something the university can fund on its own, and if it’s something that will be possible this year or the coming years,” Burrows said. “They’re trying to identify their priorities and how they can best allocate resources to the project.”
Burrows also gave a report on the Traffic Committee meeting she and Vice President Emma Day attended earlier that day.
At their last meeting, the committee voted to make the parking lot on the west side of Hammond Hall a contingency zone, meaning that it will be classified as a Zone 1 parking lot from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and as Zone 2 outside of those times.
Zone 1 parking is for staff and non-residential students, while Zone 2 is for both residential and non-residential students. The change to a contingency zone in front of Hammond Hall is so students living in Wooster will have more available parking spots close to them.
“(The committee) didn’t want to make that just a Zone 2 lot, they wanted to keep those staff parking spots, so this was a good compromise to allow the students to have additional places to park,” Burrows said.
A new sign has to be made labeling the parking lot as a contingency zone before students can park there. Once it is, an email will be sent out to students letting them know.
According to Burrows, the traffic committee also voted to no longer deny parking ticket appeals when a ticket is given and the paint marking the zone is not visible.
Thursday was the last meeting of the year for SGA. They will reconvene following the start of next semester.