Spring

2018

University of New

Mexico Campus Safety

MAJOR WRITING ASSIGNMENT 3: RECOMMENDATION REPORT

ETHAN PARKER
ENGLISH 219-017
APRIL 19, 2018
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Table of Contents

1. Introduction...............................................................................................................3

2. Abstract......................................................................................................................4

3. Methodologies...........................................................................................................5

4. Analysis of Findings....................................................................................................7

5. Recommendations and Conclusions..........................................................................10

6. References.................................................................................................................11
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Introduction

Campus safety is questioned at any university or higher education facility that you find in

the modern world today. It is something that is asked from both parents and students, and to

many college campuses is an important issue. We have all seen the news on the nights where

tragedy is filled in the homes of many Americans as they either watch in terror or have to listen

and see the aftermath of that certain event. I am sure that you as well as I can recall many that

strike a somber chord in your heart and bring back painful memories. Yet it is from these events

that we are able to learn from the mistakes that proceeded before, fixing them and gearing

forwards to prevent analogous incidents that have yet to occur. This report is sectioned

towards The University of New Mexico’s Safety Department and its constituents’ ambience

towards the campus safety that present at The University of New Mexico- Central Campus,

located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In this report you will find our methodologies, an analysis

of our findings, and recommendations that are suggested by students themselves, that they say

would possibly benefit the campus security.

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Abstract

For this analysis, we were paired in groups, and tasked with completing a research

project. When the three of us had teamed up and decided on the topic of this project a current

event that had occurred not to long before was the school shooting in Florida. This then

inspired us to ask and start an analysis on the safety of our own campus and how safe its

constituents feel about it. To do this we did the following.

 Came up with 6 questions that we thought had high importance and could best help in
giving a clear conclusion on how an average student felt on campus.

 Each [individually] asked a total of 6 students that were in different years (of both their
graduate and undergraduate degree) their opinion.

 Finalized results and analyzed the data that was collected.

 Made suggestions from that data.

From the questions that were asked, we found we found that a majority of the people that we

asked felt moderately safe on campus despite the fact that many also thought the crime rate

was moderately high, were unfamiliar with the safety procedures and over half were unaware

of the location of the UNM Police Building. In addition to this many participants of this project

agreed that intercoms and professor/ personal notifications would be more efficient than lobo

alerts as well as installation of surveillance cameras and an increase of on foot patrol officers

would be nice to see.

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Methodologies

For this experiment we surveyed 18 people. We are aware that this is only about 0.075

percent of the UNM campus population however for the deadline that was given as well as the

minimum number that was required and the restricted amount of time that each of us were

able to dedicate to this assignment because of the interference of other classes, it was what we

could handle. With these 18 people or 6 people each as there were three of us in this group we

interviewed on campus with the ones that were willing to participate. From this we asked them

six questions that we felt were simple enough to both understand and answer that would also

give a clear representation and conclusion of how the student body felt on the subject. The

script that we used can be seen below.

“We are surveying students on how safe they feel on campus for our English class. Your
response will be anonymous (unless you wish otherwise) and it will only be used for this
class, so no publishing purposes or anything similar to that. Would you be so kind to
participate?

Survey questions:
1. On a scale of 1 to 5 how safe do you feel on campus?
2.On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being the lowest how familiar are you with the procedures in case
of an emergency?
3.On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being the lowest, the middle being unsure how high do you think
the crime rate is around campus?
4.Do you think there is a better way to get lobo alerts in case classes have a “no
technology” policy?
5. Do you know where the campus police building is?
6. How do you think safety can be improved on campus?”

From these questions, we would then keep tally of the responses and when the group next met

we combined the answers that we had received and created a graph that best represented the

data that was collected in some cases and in others formulated a response that was most
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commonly given as an answer to the more open ended questions. Both the graphs and the

responses to the open ended questions can be found in the next section labeled “Analysis of

Findings”.
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Analysis of Findings

Question 1: How Safe Do You Feel On

Campus?
10
NUMBER OF PEOPLE

8 9
8
6

2
0 1 0
0
1 2 3 4 5

SCALE OF 1-5

The first question that was asked from this survey was on a general scale of 1-5 where 5

is the safest and 1 is not safe at all, how safe do you feel on campus? From the 18 students that

were interviewed one person said about a two, nine people said a three, and eight people said

a four. When averaged out the overall ranking of feeling safe is a roughly a 3.25 meaning that

students overall feel relatively safe on the UNM campus.

Question 2: How Familiar Are You With The

Saftey Procedures?
10
9
NUMBER OF PEOPLE

8 9
7
6 7
5
4
3
2
1 1 0 1
0
1 2 3 4 5

SCALE OF 1-5

The second question asks how familiar they are with the safety protocol and procedures

that UNM has established with 1 being the least familiar and 5 being the most familiar. Seven

people ranked their knowledge of this at a one, nine people estimated they were about a two,

one person claimed to be a three, and one person ranked at a five. Again when averaged, the
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overall ranking ranges to be roughly a 1. This is actually a bit of a concern because it shows that

probably a majority of the students are unaware of the safety protocol and unsure what to do

in some situations which is a higher cause of death and injury should a event arise.

Question 3: How High Do You Think The Crime

Rate Is On Campus?
12
NUMBER OF PEOPLE

10
10
8

6
6
4

2
0 2 0
0
1 2 3 4 5

SACLE OF 1-5

The third question that was asked was “How high do you think the crime rate is here on

campus?” where 1 was little to no crime rate, and 5 was extremely high crime rate. Two people

ranked it at about a two, six people ranked it at a three, and ten people ranked it at a four. The

moving average from this data was estimated to be around again a 3.25. meaning that the

crime rate on campus was estimated to me somewhat moderate.

Questions 4 and 6 are more open ended and will be seen in the “Recommendations”

section of this report.

Question 5: Do You Know Where The

Campus Police Building Is?

44%
56% Yes
No
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The final graph represented question or question 5 asks a simple yes or no question

which is do you know where the campus police building is? 56% of our sample selection said

that they did or 10 people said yes, and 44% of them said no or 8 people said they did not.

Again this is a little concerning as it is almost half and half and I would think that almost

everyone would know where the UNM police building is on campus.

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Recommendations and Conclusion

Questions 4 and 6 of our survey were more open ended questions that fit more into this

category of the report. Question 4 asks, “Do you think there is a better way to get lobo alerts in

a case where classes have a “no technology” policy like a laboratory?” Participants

recommended to us that the University used intercoms and give the professor a personal

notification about the event rather than lobo alerts being sent out and possibly missed.

Question 6 asks, “How do you think that safety can be improved on campus?”. An

overwhelming number of our sample size all recommended that the University should install

more surveillance cameras and more on-foot security on campus. Other recommendations that

were given to us were that at the beginning of the year we were given some presentation or

even a email that listed some of the safety procedures and for those who were unaware, a map

of not only where the UNM Police Department is but also a map of the blue pools labeled

emergency that are scattered through the campus.

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References

1. “University of New Mexico Police and Security.” University of New Mexico

Police and Security, police.unm.edu/.

2. “Campus Safety.” Campus Safety | The University of New Mexico,

campussafety.unm.edu/.

3. “University of New Mexico - Main Campus Crime.” College Factual, 18 Mar.

2018, www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-new-mexico-main-

campus/student-life/crime/.