CSUN Students OK Emergency Phones
Following a two-year series of sexual attacks on women on what some students and officials consider a dark college campus, students passed a Cal State University Northridge ballot measure this week approving installation of an emergency telephone system next fall.
The system will cost each student an extra one-time fee of $5. The added fee is expected to generate about $135,000--half the funds needed to purchase the 44 phones, said William Foster, general manager of Associated Students, the student government association. The university is expected to pay the balance of the cost, including installation and maintenance fees.
The phones will be installed throughout the 353-acre campus, in parking lots and near classrooms. Each will be connected to the university’s 24-hour dispatch center and will have a bright blue light, which, when activated, will help guide campus police to the proper location.
Officials cautioned that the phones are to be used for emergency only.
Between spring 1995 and fall of last year, campus police received 11 reports from women who said they were groped on a stairway in Sierra Hall. No arrests have been made and no similar incidents have been reported since the end of last semester, said Lt. Mark Hissong.
Vladimir Cerna, Associated Students president, said he first thought of adding the referendum to the ballot after seeing a similar emergency system at Cal State University Long Beach. Cerna said he spoke with one victim at CSUN who said that after she was attacked, she had to run to several buildings before she found a phone.
“It was ridiculous for [victims] to go through that to report a crime,” he said.
Also in this week’s election, students voted in favor of seeking “time-limited” tenure for college professors and against the proposed University MarketCenter--a shopping center approved by the university’s board of trustees to be built on the north campus. Both issues were advisory--serving as a student opinion poll--and will not require action by trustees, Foster said.
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