Updates for Campus Safety ’27

*This is part of The Ranchor issue of The Anchor, which is a satire edition of our student newspaper. None of this article is meant to be taken as fact.*

By: Sam Whitwicky

In accordance with the Hope College Campus Safety’s Ten Year Plan for a safer campus, developed in the summer of 2017, there have been some changes made to the way the department operates.

After several years of using a dated and not so timely system of warning students on or near campus crimes or events, the Campus Safety office is proud to offer a new an improved version of the old Timely Warning System: the Hope College Early Warning System.

This new and improved warning system alerts Hope students and staff to any and all issues that will involve the college or the surrounding area an hour or more before they happen. This new system predicts when and where crime will happen on campus, and using the dual power of mass text messaging and emailing, the campus safety office will be able to alert students and staff to avoid certain buildings, streets, address or area before any sort of crime occurs there.

Unlike in past years, when students and staff would not be alerted to crimes or emergencies on campus until at least a day had gone by or no response was given at all, the Early Warning System will give people ample time to avoid those pesky crimes that previously went unreported to college staff and students.

Additionally, the new Early Warning System will actually give relevant details about the future events, a big change from the previous “Timely” Warning System. Information like location, time, number of people involved, crime committed, steps to avoid crimes likes these and other relevant information will be included in the alerts. Hopefully these alerts will help make our campus a safer place, in a timely manner.

Another change to the way the Campus Safety department operates will be in the office’s philosophy on parking tickets. Rather than penalize students for the colleges lack of parking and overselling of parking permits in recent years, the Campus Safety office is pleased to announce that students can now pre-pay up to ten parking tickets a semester.

Rather than have to come in to pay with a cash or check or let the ticket be placed on your student account bill so that your parents will see, students will be able to pre purchase ten parking tickets at the beginning of the semester when you purchase your parking permit.

This will both streamline the ticketing process, campus safety’s main source of revenue, and ease the worries students may have when they inevitably park in a visitors lot because every other lot near campus is full. Unfortunately, like unused meal swipes, the prepaid tickets will not roll over into the next semester or be refund onto to your student account.