The topic of public safety and security has been an ongoing conversation throughout Kent’s campus. In order to strive towards better communication between the Safety officers and the students, Brian Hunt, Kent’s director of security, has decided to create a student-based Safety Committee to hold monthly meetings with the faculty to discuss safety issues on campus.

Last year, the Safety Committee was only comprised of faculty and security officers; but now, Mr. Hunt says, “as opposed to 200 eyes, we now added 588 pairs of eyes to help us identify areas that may need some attention.” He also mentions that there have been a lot of upgrades in the security program and that the main goal of this Student Committee is to “see how these upgrades are working and make sure it is working towards what we think it is doing.”

While getting the students’ perspective on security issues is an important step towards better campus safety, this new Student Committee has another objective: to foster better understanding between students and security officers. Mr. Hunt explains, “there are certain things we have to do to protect the students,” and he hopes that having this committee will help students understand why security takes the actions it does.

The committee’s first meeting will be on October 1st, 2017 and many students have already expressed interest. Mr. Hunt wants to “take the information gathered by our students and try to incorporate changes that are warranted,” while we, as students, will take this opportunity to play a positive role in Kent’s safety.