A UW-Madison Safety Task Force may soon form after a private safety summit held Tuesday in Bascom Hall analyzed current campus safety and plans for improvement.
Organizations such as the Associated Students of Madison, Safe Arrival For Everyone services and University Health Services, as well as Dean of Students Lori Berquam and representatives from the University Police Department were present.
""A large number of different issues were discussed from who is taking responsibility to what is our overall campus message,"" Berquam said after the summit.
""It was really a great discussion between students and administration in trying to figure out what do we do to change the culture in our campus about safety,"" she said.
Berquam also said one of the main things discussed in the summit was the possibility of creating a designated safety office on campus.
""With the campus safety issue ,we're centralizing it and giving people one place to go,"" said ASM Campus Safety Coordinator Kelly Arendt. ""It's really preliminary. ... It was just an idea that was thrown out because we see that campus safety is really decentralized.""
ASM Chair Dylan Rath said he also wants to have ""some sort of safety office or a safety coordinator to oversee all the safety efforts in one office, so we can have a more concentrated effort to reduce attacks.""
Although Rath said he is concerned there could be problems funding a safety office, he said the idea is worth pursuing.
""I think that it would be a nice complementary service to SAFE as far as being a kind of centralized location that we, as well as other campus departments and units, could use to better promote our service,"" SAFE coordinator Jacob Hahn said.
Hahn said the summit came at the perfect time, giving everyone ample time to consider the sexual assaults that occurred last semester.
""The safety summit was a great first step to getting everybody's ideas out there and get everybody on the same page,"" Hahn said. ""I can see more meetings like this in the future where we delve more deeply into these safety issues.""
