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University of Massachusetts Amherst
SARIS - Student Affairs Research, Information and Systems
Campus Safety Issues (S01-C)

Executive Summary: Students living on campus felt significantly safer walking on campus during the day than at night, with women feeling less safe overall. One-third of the students said that they had used the Escort Service during the year: Women were significantly more likely than men to have done so. Of students who used the service, two-thirds said that they did so “a few times per semester” and over 80% said that they were satisfied with it. Most common reasons for using the Escort Service were nervousness about walking alone at night, being unable to walk for medical reasons, and having had a bad experience walking on campus at night. Slightly more than half of the respondents expressed support for installing security cameras in residence hall lobbies, with women significantly more likely than men to be supportive.

On Tuesday, February 27, 2001, Project Pulse conducted a telephone survey for Public Safety investigating a variety of safety issues on campus. Pulse interviewers attempted to contact 799 students who had been randomly selected by computer from the entire on-campus population in the University’s database. Of these, 616 were successfully contacted and 484 (78.6%) agreed to be interviewed. Table 1 displays the final disposition of the sample and Table 2 provides a demographic summary of the respondents. The response rate for the survey was 60.6% and the sampling error is approximately five percentage points.

First, students were asked two general questions about overall safety on campus. Most students (87.3%, n=440) said that they feel “very safe” walking alone on campus in the day, whereas one-third (32.9%, n=166) said that they feel equally safe at night (see Figure 1). Men were somewhat more likely than women to report feeling “very” safe on campus during the day (94.0% v. 81.4%, c2=20.46, p=.000), and they were dramatically more likely (59.2% v. 10.0%, c2=182.70, p=.000) to report feeling “very” safe at night (see Figure 2).

Figure 1. Students’ perceptions of safety walking alone on campus

Figure 2. Students’ perceptions of safety walking alone on campus, by sex
(% saying they feel very safe)

Most of the respondents are aware that there is a campus Escort Service provided by the Department of Public Safety (96.4%, n=486) and that it operates a van which makes regular stops on a preset route around campus (81.0%, n=393). In contrast, only half of the respondents (53.6%, n=260) are aware that the Escort Service also provides walking escorts to and from campus locations.

One-third of the respondents (36.4%, n=177) reported that they had used the Escort Service during this academic year. Women were significantly more likely than men (45.1% v. 26.1%, c2=18.70, p=.000) to have used the Escort Service. There was no significant difference in use of the service by residential area. Students who said that they had used the Escort Service were asked several additional questions about that experience. Two-thirds (63.3%, n=112) of the respondents said that they used the service “a few times per semester” whereas very few (3.4%) used it “almost daily” (see Figure 3). Most students who had used the Escort Service (84.1%, n=148) were satisfied with it (see Figure 4). Users reported that they typically had to wait an average of 12.3 minutes for the Escort Service to show up after they called. Small proportions of respondents reported that they had called the Escort Service and been refused an escorted walk (3.7%, n=6) or a ride to or from a parking area or apartment complex (13.0%, n=22).

Figure 3. How often have you used the Escort Service this academic year?

Figure 4. Satisfaction with the Escort Service

The next battery of questions, addressed only to the 177 Escort Service users, asked how important various reasons for using the Escort Service were to them personally (see Figure 5). The largest proportion of respondents (83.5%, n=147) reported that nervousness about walking at night was important. Over half (55.1%, n=97) said that being unable to walk for some medical reason was important, or that they had had a bad experience walking on campus at night (54.3%, n=95), and 42.6% (n=75) said that not feeling like walking had been important. Women were more likely than men (65.3% v. 27.6%, c2=40.57, p=.000) to say that nervousness about walking on campus at night was “very” important.

Figure 5. Reasons for using the Escort Service

A related battery of questions was addressed to the 309 respondents who said that they have not used the Escort Service, asking how important various reasons for not using the Escort Service were to them personally (see Figure 6). Two-thirds of those respondents said that it was important that they were not nervous walking on campus at night (62.3%, n=192), and over half reported that they always had someone to walk with on campus at night (55.5%, n=171). Women were more likely than men (41.4% v. 16.0%, c2=29.13, p=.000) to say it was “very” important that they always have someone to walk with on campus at night. Men were more likely than women (41.7% v. 22.1%, c2=22.80, p=.000) to say it was “very” important that they do not feel nervous about walking on campus at night.

Figure 6. Reasons for not using the Escort Service

All respondents were asked whether they would support the idea of having security cameras, like the one in the W.E.B. DuBois Library, posted in all of the residence hall lobbies on campus. Slightly more than half of the respondents (54.2%, n=271) were supportive of the idea. Women were significantly more likely than men (62.8% v. 44.8%,c2=16.10, p=.000) to describe themselves as supportive of security cameras.

-- Meg Kluge

Item-by-item

Open-ended responses