An average college freshman wakes up on her 3rd week of school. After getting ready for her classes she then begins to check her phone and emails. Throughout the night she has received four alert text messages and emails about crimes reported on campus. Upon reading the messages she feels the fear growing within her, but she also remembers that it is these are good measures taken by her university to keep her safe and informed. However, as her semester goes on these frequent messages begin to lose their value. By the time that she gets to the end of her semester, she no longer reads the alerts that come on her email but instead deletes them because she feels that theyalways say the same thing.
While going to school in the city, it is obvious that crime rates are thought to be much higher than when attending college in an urban area. After talking to a freshman student attending Virginia Commonwealth University she states that, “I receive these [emails] 4 times a week” this is a noticeably different number than after talking to another student that attends college in a rural area claiming that she only receives them “once every two weeks or so”. After learning this the question is, do these crime alerts really help students be more aware of their surroundings or are they becoming dangerously numb to the crime around them?
Among the many alerts sent out on a regular basis, the most common is “notice of arrest” and “robbery”. A lot of the robbery at VCU can be attributed to the fact that it is located in the city.
When email alerts are sent out about a robbery it at least tells students the location so that they may avoid the area if the criminal is not found. This crime may be one of the only crimes that seems real to students because it effects so many of them every day. With that being said students should always be kept up to day on robberies around campus as they are happening.
Many students park on the streets or in a parking deck where the cars are out in the open for potential thieves to see the belongings in the car. In result of this, many students have reported having their cars broken into. However in the city, not as many students drive their cars to class so the minority of students would not pay these warnings too much attention.
One of the other most common crimes that students are notified about are “sexual misconduct” according to Amber Lucy, a student at Christopher Newport University. These crimes are the third most common on college campuses.
One of the consequences that could come from students growing more and more immune to these crime alerts is that when there is an actual threat to the student body, the alerts might not be viewed with the importance that they should be. When talking with Lucy about how often she actually reads these crime alerts she states that, “I used to, but they`re the same email sent everytime”. Clearly all across college campuses these crime alerts are becoming increasingly given less important to the student body. For each email that is sent students claim that it seems like just a few words were changed. Therefore, this could mean that the alertslose the ability to connect with the students on a personal level completely defeating theuniversities purpose to warn them.
