The Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) has recently implemented two changes to its safety shuttle service in response to increased student demand and voiced concerns.
TUPD offers Safety Escort Service 24 hours a day, seven days a week to transport community members between various campus locations, to local transit stations and to neighborhoods around campus. They also offer an additional dedicated safety shuttle service on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights to any students in need.
The safety shuttle service — which this semester extended the hours on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights — is now also operated by campus security officers instead of sworn TUPD officers, according to Director of Public and Environmental Safety Kevin Maguire.
This move to have a campus security officer run the safety shuttle service occurred because students felt less comfortable using it when police officers operate the service, Maguire said.
"We heard a response from students that they were nervous to use the service if there was a police officer providing it," Maguire said. "What we don't want to do is have students be reluctant to use the service."
Maguire anticipates that the current system will help students feel more at ease calling TUPD for security escorts around campus.
"We figured that if we could have one of our campus security officers provide that instead of the police, if that took the fear of using campus shuttle away, why not give it a try?" he added.
This change will also relieve sworn police officers of some of their duties, providing them more time to respond to emergency calls on the Medford/Somerville campus, Maguire said.
"Our security officers are very well trained, but they don't have the critical response role that police do, and we would rather reserve critical response roles for the police," Maguire said.
TUPD extended the service's closing hour of operation this month from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, Maguire said. The decision to extend the hours was prompted by increased student demand, in addition to a heightened awareness of campus safety in recent weeks, he explained.
"We found that there were many requests after 2 a.m. on peak nights of request," Maguire said.
The increased hours of the safety shuttle service does not place an increased financial burden on the university, Maguire said.
Calls requesting the service have increased over the past five years, Maguire noted. This may be in part due to abuse of the service by students, he explained. He considers intoxicated students requesting rides to and from parties an "abuse" of the safety shuttle service.
"The inference is that people are abusing the system, but we have no concrete numbers to support that," he said.
Senior Brianna Atkinson said she took advantage of the safety shuttle service frequently during her junior year when she lived off−campus.
"I used to call TUPD pretty often, because it took me a long time to get home from campus, and it would often be really dark outside," Atkinson said. "I would get annoyed when calling because they would seem to have an attitude about my calling."
TUPD assists students on a first−come−first−served basis and will always respond to a call regardless of the circumstances, Maguire said.
"There is no vetting process. If a student calls and says they need a safety escort, [TUPD] will come," Maguire said.
Junior Allison Cohen was positive about the service but said TUPD should attend to callers who have the highest need first.
"They should have a way to prioritize the calls so no one is just waiting in the cold while someone else needs help," Cohen said.
