In last week’s ASM meeting it was announced that the UWPD has partnered with Rave, a company that allows safety officials to respond more quickly to incidents, to create an app for UW students. The WiscGuard app, which can be found in the Apple and Google Play Stores under the name “Rave Guard,” allows UW students to report any incidents they witness, call 911 or send texts and calls to a direct non-emergency UWPD line.
While the app boasts a plethora of features, there is one that has been overlooked by other news sources. The WiscGuard app has partnered with Twitter in an effort to allow students to tweet their incidents as they occur.
When we reached out to the UWPD Emergency Management Director about the practicality of this function he said, “We understand that Twitter is a popular social media platform and wanted to give students the option of @ing the perpetrator of the drunken brawl as it takes place.” He continued, “Twitter has even made a function just for this app that automatically opens up the camera and allows you to take a selfie with said perpetrator. It’s ingenious, really.”
Cardinal staffers later reached out to a student, CIive Ben Hurt, who had been attacked and used the WiscGuard app to notify UWPD via Twitter. When asked about the utility of the app he told us, “So I opened up the app as this drunk freshman was trying to kick in my ribcage, cause you know, that’s the first thing you do when you’re getting beat up, right? Then when the camera automatically opened up the dude actually stopped kicking me so we could take a selfie together.”
He continued, “We took a couple of selfies, then he got really upset when he realized there weren’t any filters available. He was about to try hitting me again when UWPD suddenly showed up and tackled him to the ground. They showed up really quickly so that’s cool, I guess. Now if only they could add some gifs...”
Following this incident UWPD has released a statement announcing that they are planning to include filters and begin partnerships with Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram.
