Daylight savings time may mean you got to sleep in, but it also means earlier, darker nights. It’s at this time of year that students become more concerned about walking home from that 6-9 p.m. class. Should we be worried? U of T Police Staff Sergeant Sam D’Angelo and Community Safety Coordinator Caroline Rabbat took the Varsity on a walkthrough of St. George campus to look at some of the safety features of the university and also to identify some of its problems.
D’Angelo and Rabbat were quick to point out the work U of T has been doing to increase safety. For D’Angelo, technology is the most important improvement. Video cameras, alarm responses and access control have all helped police to monitor campus buildings. But wait: what video cameras? D’Angelo assures me, that they are only in underground parking garages and at the new student residence at 89 Chestnut, where the cameras were pre-installed.
Outside, technology is represented by the call boxes scattered across campus. Call boxes are hands-free telephones that connect directly to the U of T police office at the press of a button.
One hundred and forty dot the dark zones of campus. Pay phones at the university can also be used to dial the U of T police free of charge.
The call boxes may be fancy, but according to D’Angelo, no one really uses them. “They’re used very, very rarely,” said D’Angelo. “I can’t remember the last time it was used for an actual emergency.” Even crank calls are at a minimum. Walksafer, on the other hand, gets about 20-25 calls a week. The program, which the U of T police also run, sends teams of volunteers to walk students through campus.
But back to the call boxes. Aren’t they just replacing a more thorough police presence on campus? D’Angelo disagreed. “We have also increased our police compliment,” he said. “We can’t be everywhere all the time. Technology has to play a role.” Call boxes make people feel safer, he argued, and many of them have been installed at the request of students. For example, in Robarts library there are now call boxes on every floor due to student demand.
Rabbat’s department also does their bit through regular meetings with students, staff and faculty who feel their personal safety is at risk. Aside from dealing with immediate crises, Rabbat feels that an important part of her job is preparing students in advance to be more street smart. “A big 40 per cent of my work is delivering training and workshops to residences, staff and faculty…[so they] have a heightened awareness on how they can take more responsibility for their personal safety.” Students can also take a number of self-defense courses through Rabbat’s office such as the urban self-defense program.
No matter how well you can block and kick, though, the design of a campus is still important for safety. Just for that reason, the university holds bi-annual campus safety walkthroughs. According to Phil Garment from Facilities and Services, some of the standard recommendations that emerge from the tours included the replacement and addition of new lights, the placement of mirrors inside buildings and the removal of signs and vegetation that might hide predators. “We do the campus tour because it’s a very large infrastructure and it’s important to check out. That’s why we do it twice a year,” said Garment.
This all sounds nice and thorough but there’s just one problem: U of T is an open campus. This means that the university doesn’t own a lot of the areas we walk through every day. Major streets are controlled by the City of Toronto. Ditto for minor streets and laneways. Both the city and the provincial government are in charge of Queen’s Park. So where does this leave U of T?
“We don’t have the same type of campus like York, or Scarborough/Erindale, for that matter, because they’re enclosed where they have complete control of everything within the campus,” said D’Angelo. “And if we were to make a recommendation we’d have to make it to the city. It’s not our property…we couldn’t just go out there and put more lights.” That would explain the absence of call boxes on such important campus roadways as College, Bloor, St. George and Huron Streets.
This has made securing certain key areas difficult for the university, most notably, Queen’s Park. Rabbat hears complaints about the park all the time. “I think consistently we’ve heard students feel that Queen’s Park is not a safe place in the evenings and feel very uncomfortable and unsafe about crossing through [it]…”
The lack of crosswalks is what concerns D’Angelo the most about Queen’s Park. If you’ve ever had a class at Victoria or St. Mike’s, you’ve probably learned the great art of dodging four lanes of traffic. “This has been an ongoing issue for eight to 10 years,” said D’Angelo. “There have been requests made to the city to put something up here. But nothing has happened as far as I know.” Garment has faced a similar problem with his concerns. “We found it [Queen’s Park] very dark and we put a call into the city. It’s required constant phone calls…It takes a long time for the city to do anything.”
So is U of T really that safe in the end? Although D’Angelo and Rabbat denied the presence of any “hotspots” other than Queen’s Park, U of T’s Sexual Harassment Officer, Paddy Stamp can list a couple of areas of which students aren’t so fond. “There’s no hotspots…there’s certain areas I don’t like going in, ever. I understand the bowels of Innis College are kinda creepy.” She also said that the basement locker area on the Scarborough campus and the Galbraith building are potential areas of concern. Garment worries about Robarts. “Robarts could do with more illumination, on the outside it’s a little sparse.” The south side, in particular, caught his attention.
According to Rabbat’s 2002-2003 Annual Report, the number of assaults has actually been on the rise on campus. Only five were reported in 2000-2001. Last year there were 16 cases of assault. Threatening behaviour also climbed from 19 in 1999-2000 to a high of 26 in 2001-2002 before dipping back down to 22 last year.
On the positive side, criminal harassment has been on the decline. At Stamp’s office, the number of complaints has dropped from 271 to 227. Although this might still seem high, Stamp insists that the majority of complaints do not stem from fear of bodily harm.
From the perspective of the police, harassment or assault is an infrequent occurrence. “The majority of the calls are crimes of property, thefts of either knapsacks, wallets, bicycles,” said D’Angelo. “It’s not the norm to have a call for a crime against person, it just doesn’t happen that often.”
Most importantly, students seem to feel safe on campus. “We at the community safety office have been collecting anecdotal stories from students around their perception of safety,” said Rabbat. “Their general perception is that they do feel safe.” Stamp echoes this sentiment. “My own sense of safety on campus is pretty high.” For a downtown campus, that’s quite an accomplishment.
