You need to upgrade your Flash Player
To fully experience this site you will need to down load Flash Player.
Users without the Flash plugin or with
Javascript turned off will see this text in the banner area. If you would like to view our alternate html page then bypass the detection if you wish.
It’s times like this, we should have a gated campus The South Texan |
 Dominique Garcia thesouthtexan |
After three hours, several text messages, 20 phone calls and a candy bar from the vending machine, I was ready to go home after two Manning Hall custodians verified that Wednesday’s lock-down was over.
The lock-down began after a dozen suspected illegal immigrants fled from a vehicle after a traffic stop near the Texas A&M University-Kingsville campus.
The university did an excellent job on informing its students about the lock-down and its procedures. We were notified by phone, e-mail and text not to leave the premises until further notice.
However, there is one concern on my mind after experiencing this situation at hand – campus security.
Our campus sits in between several neighborhoods, which leaves its streets accessible for passersby’s. It would be great if our university would be a gated campus community complete with extra campus security and entrances.
If for some reason or another our university decides to go forth with this idea in the future it would allow university officials to take more action into making sure no one leaves or enters the premises.
The university already has several officers working for the University Police Department and a handful of campus security officers who do an excellent job of patrolling the university but more needs to be done to ensure our safety in situations such as this.
As I found out of the university’s lock-down plan, I watched as several students fled the university campus regardless of the security message not to leave the premises.
Had we had a gated campus community complete with extra campus security this would have not happened.
Since the situation was not life threatening, leaving the premises was not such a big deal after the fact but at the time it was.
Had the situation been life threatening a gated community with security at each entrance and officers on patrol would have helped.
Many universities and colleges across the nation have systems such as this to ensure the safety of its students, faculty and staff.
For example, imagine a campus that would only allow those with proper university ID and visitors who requested a visitor’s pass in advance to enter the premises.
This would ensure our safety as a campus community and our student body as a whole.