By Heidi Strehike
Ryerson students were invited to help improve safety measures on campus as the Audit Committee began preparing for September’s safety audit of Ryerson. A pilot audit took place last Thursday.
“We want a lot of student and faculty involvement, and involvement from the community, because Ryerson is a community,” said John Mihalic, committee chair. He was pleased with the student turnout. Approximately 40 people showed up to offer input on the checklist that will be used to evaluate the safety of Ryerson’s physical environment in September. The audits will continue over the summer to find a checklist to test the perception of campus safety.
Students who attended the first audit were given three different question forms to evaluate. Some were also equipped with tape recorders, camcorders or Polaroid cameras. The groups were sent to evaluate six key areas, including Jorgenson Hall, the Theatre School, Kerr Hall and the Quad area. Many students were pleased with the chance to evaluate Ryerson’s safety.
“There are little points you’ve been thinking of all these years and didn’t say anything about.” said Merril Fung, a fourth-year Architecture student. “Now you can give your input and maybe something will happen.”
Some of the safety issues discovered included bathroom light switches which can be flicked off, confusing signs, dead-ends and stairwells conducive to entrapment and lack of access to help if it is needed.
Fourth-year Architecture student Marina Ramirez said that this project also gave her a sense of the importance of safety audits in her work.
“It gives you an idea of one of the initial things you should think about before you design,” she said.
Ken Knox, a third-year Applied Geography student, hopes he will have a further opportunity to participate in making Ryerson a safer place.
“It brought you out of your environment. Because you’re doing a safety audit, you see a lot of things you’d overlooked,” Knox said. “You realize there are a lot of concerns that need to be dealt with.”
Karen Craig is the manager of security at Ryerson, volunteers on the audit committee and takes night courses at Ryerson. She described Thursday’s pilot audit as “fabulous.”
“It’s going to identify the areas that need to be improved campus-wide and we only touched on a few areas tonight,” she said. “What it’s going to do is outline recommendations which we as security can help pout through to help afford a better level of safety on campus.”
Craig knows first hand how difficult it is to monitor Ryerson’s campus. Security officers have to deal with everything from dark corners and broken fences to used condoms and discarded syringes. Craig hopes that Septe mber’s audit will help make the officers’ jobs easier.
“this is a huge campus in downtown Toronto that has so many areas to patrol. With the limited amount of staff and systems that we have now, we’re only scratching the surface.”
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