Recently, administration sent a message to students regarding driver safety. Over the past few months, students have been reported for driving recklessly around College Park. To address this issue, Dean Swenson notified students of the issue and requested heavier patrol around the neighborhood.
While some freshmen wondered why the email was sent out to them, as they are generally unable to drive yet, Mr. Swenson stated that he simply wanted everyone to be aware of their surroundings. “We have a substantial amount of student drivers, [mostly] sophomores, juniors, and seniors. The reason I wanted to go to everyone was because I wanted everyone to be reminded of our duty to obey traffic laws,” he said.
Though many of us are aware of basic safety, Mr. Swenson wanted to directly address those who may not be aware of the serious consequences of disregarding the safety of ourselves and others. “I don’t know which students are driving badly [specifically] so I wanted to address everyone on this issue [and remind them to be] on their best behavior,” he said.
With the increased patrolling, Mr. Swenson hopes that students will be able to obey the law and stay out of trouble. However, if students decide not to comply to the rules, will one email do the job? Mr. Swenson mentioned he has had success in the past with just one email, so he hopes that one reminder is sufficient. “We’ve had success with just one email sent out, I’ve already had success with the request of more police,” he said. “My expectation is that [students] will follow all safety rules, and hopefully the [number of complaints] goes down.”
A majority of student drivers immediately recognize the importance of driving safely around the neighborhood when the email is sent out. With such extreme measures of requesting heavier patrols around campus, the expectation is that students will hammer this message into their heads. Mr. Swenson emphasized that the increase in patrols has been sufficient, and said, “[The best way] is increasing the amount of patrols on campus, that has worked so far in the past.” Another suggestion he made was setting a requirement for certain safety courses. “One of the options is to change how we issue parking permits. We might require certain driver safety courses prior to allowing a student to purchase a parking sticker,” he said. With several solutions to the problem, Mr. Swenson hopes that it will only take the use of more patrols in order to maintain a safe driving area on campus and around the neighborhood.
Overall, the hope is that the severity of this issue comes across to all students. We ask that every student does their duty of driving carefully in order to protect their lives and the lives of others.