Two Tuesdays ago, around 10:00 p.m., we were walking from the Small Group Housing Complex to the South Forty when, all of a sudden, a student on bike rounded the corner and fell hard onto the pavement. As she fell, we distinctly heard her keys drop to the ground and for a minute thought she had landed on them and sustained damage to her face. Fortunately, this turned out not to be the case. We thought she was seriously hurt and stopped dead in our tracks. The girl had begun to cry and we did not know what to do. The first thing we thought of was to use a cell phone to call the police. However we soon realized that there was a blue light phone nearby, and perhaps the police would be reached faster by using this technology. However, the phone proved ineffective and the police responded slowly.

After a nearby student pressed the blue light, it began, oddly enough, to ring as if we had called a hotline. We were very surprised, especially when it took five or six rings before we got an answer. By the time we got a police officer on the line, we had established that the girl was alright, just startled, with a bruised face. Yet this situation disturbed my friend and me. We are currently sophomores, and since freshman year, have been prodded by campus officials to use the Blue Light System if ever we had a problem. Trouble is, if a student is being chased, for example, and presses the blue light for help, they don’t have the time for an officer to pick up. There would likely be no time to stop at all; for if they do so their attacker will probably hurt them.

Police may counter by saying that the current hotline system is a means to prevent prank calls. But, again, if a person is in serious trouble, will they actually wait for a police officer to pick up the phone? Not likely. We, as college students, should get a little more credit, and should be trusted not to abuse police protection through prank calls. Yes, some of us are immature and are prone to do things that might not be in the best interest of the whole community, but the vast majority of students understand the implications of what pressing a blue light entails.

If administrators intend to maintain this delayed-response hotline system, they at least ought to be upfront about the system’s uses. They ought to tell students that the blue lights are not an immediate response system, and that if they desire urgent help, they ought to call the police directly.

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