A Report on SMC's Campus Safety
Campus safety is a top priority for Santa Monica College (SMC), as it is for school officials and governing bodies across the country.
Campus safety speaks to more than campus-wide emergency situations or petty crimes like theft. It also includes issues like stalking, assault, and sexual battery. Among undergraduate students, 23.1 percent of females and 5.4 percent of males experience rape or sexual assault, according to the report by the American Association for Universities (AAU) “Report on Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct”, published in 2015. “Campus Sexual Violence Statistics”, a study done by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network in 2016 shows that students are at the highest risk of sexual assault in the first few months of their first and second semesters in college.
The chief of the SMC Police Department (SMCPD) is Johnnie Adams. He oversees the sworn officers, who are law enforcement officials with the power to arrest and carry arms, as well as other security personnel that serve the SMC community.
A study done by the U.S. Department of Justice, published in 2015, shows that the average public four year university has an average of 1.4 sworn officers per 1,000 students if the campus has 15,000 students or more. Although community colleges were not included in this study, the report illustrates that in order for SMC to reflect national averages of campus security, it would need about 45 sworn officers to effectively police an on-campus population of around 32,000 students. This year, the SMCPD has 17. Nonetheless, Chief Adams thinks that SMC is in a comfortable position.
“As a community college we’re actually fairly well-staffed,” said Adams. “Because of the fact that we do not have dormitories, we can lessen the amount of staff that we have overnight…We’re able to handle what we have thrown at us.”
He also mentions that sworn officers are supplemented by other safety employees. Campus safety officers, parking enforcement officers, and 10 to 12 new cadets are all able to act as eyes and ears on campus too, according to Adams.
Another tool that Chief Adams calls a “force multiplier” is the LiveSafe app. This safety app is free to download for any SMC student, and it provides the ability to send texts, pictures, and videos to the SMCPD. It also has a SafeWalk option where friends can virtually escort a student while commuting to school or between campuses. It allows students to report suspicious activities on campus, with the option of staying anonymous.
Associated Students (A.S.) President Daniel Cha thinks that the SMCPD is doing a great job. Cha said, “Out of a hundred, I think Santa Monica is really safe . . . If there is ever a situation where a student feels uncomfortable or they need access to different things or people, that opportunity is there for them and there’s people that will help them along the way.”
Lucia Aguilar, Political Science and Economics major at SMC says that she feels very safe and secure on campus most of the time. “The cops on pay are all very professional, and that helps to keep peace between those students and the cops and any other outside influence that might get onto our school campus,” said Aguilar. However, she felt that there have been instances that were “not okay.”
“There’s this one guy who always comes here and pretends he’s a student but he’s not. He follows women and tries to talk to them… I respect your space as a human, but when you starts to encroach on the learning environment of young women, it becomes slightly predatory,” Aguilar said.
Haley Jacalon, an International Relations major, says her sense of safety on campus is a five on a scale from one to 10. Like Aguilar, she mentions men on campus being aggressive and following her around, not listening when she asks them to leave her alone. She also speaks of occasions where, in the library, people drop nudes or pornographic images to stranger’s phones via AirDrop.
“I think there should be police on campus. I know we have police across the street but I never see them on campus,” said Jacalon. “I think just the sheer presence of an authority figure puts people on edge. I know that I stop speeding if there’s a police car around, so for sure I would stop harassing another woman if there’s a police officers around who would say something...I never in any occasion have felt like there is someone that I could turn to in those specific moments. Obviously I could run to the police office and tell them what happened, but who cares if it’s just harassment? There’s no way to prove it.”
Neither Jacalon nor Aguilar said they had heard of the LiveSafe app.
The app was first introduced to SMC in 2016, and SMC was one of the first community colleges in the nation to adopt this safety app. Although it’s free to download and use for any student, the total subscription is priced around one dollar per enrolled student for the school year, and costs SMC around $28,000 a year.
The A.S. Board of Directors has chosen to approve payment for the LiveSafe app every year since its introduction to SMC, contributing an annual $20,000 for the app’s subscription. The other $8,000 comes out of the school’s Emergency Preparedness Fund. This fund also pays for the advertisement of the app to promote it towards the student body.
When the app first launched at SMC in 2016, the A.S. Vice President at the time, Adrian M. Restrepo, reported to the Corsair that the app would be on a trial run, and further decisions would be based on number of downloads and the perceived benefits to the student communities.
Current A.S. President Cha and A.S. Vice President Yongha “Eric” Hwang explained they have not seen a report about the frequency of usage of the app, and were unaware of past efforts to monitor the app, or the exact amount of money that A.S. has spent on LiveSafe each year. They, as well as Chief Adams, expressed that they do not have any concerns about the app getting funded again in the Spring. They believe the app is worth it, because it provides more accessibility and transparency.
“If there’s only a small amount of number of students who are using the app, I think that app is still worth it, because we can save their life,” said Hwang. “If we can save just one student, it’s really worth it, and that’s why we funded for this app.”
Hwang admits that, “it’s our mistake that we didn’t check their specific data and specific resources about how many people will use [the app].” They promise to discuss it with the A.S. Board, and to start requesting more regular usage reports beginning next semester. They will also present plans on how to further promote the app amongst students.
One of the ideas Hwang has is to ask SMC faculty to add a paragraph about the LiveSafe App in each syllabus to raise awareness.
“Also we can ask the Welcome Center, ‘why don’t you have some presentation or some slides about the LiveSafe app for the new incoming students when they have their orientation session?’” said Hwang.
However, Adams has already been doing this.
“Every Freshman VIP Welcome Day, I talk about it and I talk about it with [student’s] parents.” says Chief Adams. He has seen a big increase in downloads because of it; there were 1167 new SMC users this year. He has seen the biggest increase by doing give-aways, or by telling Freshman’s parents about the app, who then tell their children to download it. Yet, with only 300 calls/texts through the LiveSafe app and 172 people using the SafeWalk feature in the past year, it seems to only be scratching the surface.
Adams is aware of the need for further promotion of the LiveSafe App and other crime prevention and community involvement for the sake of campus safety. He has found that people don’t pay attention to safety tools until they’ve become a victim. Adams referred to repeated occurrences when he speaks to a group of around 50 students about the app, and only five or six people know about it.
“What people don’t realize is this: the time they really need the app, it’s too late - if they don’t have it,” says Adams.
Adams would want to implement more training and crime prevention programs if he was given a bigger budget, because he believes utilizing the community is the key to a safer campus. With a full-time employee that is dedicated to such programs and classes, the marketing costs, and program costs combined, he estimates that this could be over six figures. “Right now, the budget is what it is, and I think we are doing a pretty good job with what we have.”