By: Danielle McCullough
March 1, 2017
The 2017-2018 academic year for Dominican has brought in new changes for students, faculty and staff. Public Safety is also changing their mission. One of the biggest changes to occur within the last year was the ability of students to track the shuttle service on both the main and priory campus, and the green line stop. The shuttle service is a community resource. Throughout the morning, there is more than one shuttle bus running from main to priory and main to green and throughout day it is running on a continuous pace-like system. No longer do students have to contact public safety and ask about the whereabouts of the shuttle driver. This change is just the beginning of the new future of the Public Safety. There have also been updates made to Dominican’s emergency broadcasting service, hence, the alertus boxes in the residence halls.
Another big change was the introduction of “in-house” security officers. In the past, Dominican has paid for a contractor service to provide officers. This has not only cost the university money, but has also caused a riff in the relationship between the Dominican community and the Public Safety office. As of late, the guards working on campus are Dominican University security guards. Jill Albin-Hill, Vice President for Technology & Operations, stated, “Bringing security back ‘in-house’ will bring more flexibility.” This will bring more awareness of public safety, but also provide public safety with the visibility it needs as a security department and a community resource. One of the main priorities of the Public Safety Office is to bring awareness to the community in hopes to provide information on how to act and be safe.
Since the launching of the shuttle tracker, there has also been changes made within the Public Safety and communication with the community. Along with the ability of students to track the shuttle, the public safety office can as well. Hill mentions “Dispatch logs everything, any complaints will be documented and go into a shift report, and there will be a follow-up”. If anything happens on campus or with the shuttle service, it is a student’s duty to report it to the public safety office. Public Safety’s motto is “See Something, Say Something” any student can reach public safety at 708-524-5999.
If you live in the resident halls, something you may have noticed are the alertus boxes. These boxes can be found on every floor of any residence halls or areas on campus where voice communication was once unavailable. In any emergency, alertus is an announcement system that works with the fire alarm systems to vocally communicate information to students and faculty and staff. Text alerts, however, are available to students and staff who have signed up for the emergency notification system. If you have not, log in to mydu.dom.edu and click on “emergency notifications” to sign up.
All the changes made to the Public Safety Office are to provide a better connection of public safety to the Dominican community. There will be further updates made to public safety as the school year comes to an end, however, majority of students, faculty, and staff will not see these changes until the upcoming Fall semester.
