On Nov. 8, the After Dark Safety Walk was held by several parties of faculty, staff and student walkers starting at 7 p.m. The parties met at the Ruffner steps (Brock Commons side), Chi Fountain, Wheeler Mall, Lankford Mall, the Health & Fitness Center parking lot entrance, Longwood Village Clubhouse, Lancer Park Clubhouse, and the Landings (Southeast building) front desk and fanned out around campus and surrounding Longwood property. A party leaving Chi Fountain included a mixture of persons with different jobs and inclinations. Louise Waller, Longwood's space planning and real property manager, Darlene Bratcher, director of conferences and scheduling, business faculty Benny Waller, Alumni Relations Nancy Shelton, Capitol Planning's J.W. Wood and Aramark Housekeeping's Allen Mason were involved faculty and staff members. Student walkers included participants Thomas Tracy and Catherine Vaughn and Student Government Association (SGA) members Angela Faulks and Matthew Hovey.
The walkers set out from Brock Commons onto the arcade behind Dorrill Dining Hall while soccer players practiced in the early night. From there, they went by way of the Longwood University Police Station to the Parking Garage under Brock Commons and passed out onto Spruce Street by Frazer and Curry. From Spruce, the walkers went to the Health and Wellness Center and from there onto Hull Promenade passing Wygal and returning to the front of Dorrill Dining. Louise Waller outlined the objectives of the walk as to look for "tripping hazards, places where someone could hide and not well lit areas." By the end of the night, the group had recorded one and a quarter pages of safety adjustments including "cracked, uneven pavement" and unlit lights.
Before the event, Louise Waller was available to speak about the event. When asked about how she learned about the After Dark Safety Walk, Waller said, "I was contacted by Doug Howe in Housing and he invited me to participate and be part of this event. Him and Jennifer Paulette have been working together to create and facilitate the event." Waller also said of the event, "I think whenever you have so many eyes looking at a situation and … just trying to be proactive reactive I think is always a good thing."
Plans were also being made to have the walks be an annual event. Student Catherine Vaughn who found out about the event via Facebook, the Cunningham Resident Assistants and the napkin holder advertisements in Dorrill Dining Hall had a few words to say. Vaughn said, "I definitely think it's a useful activity. Some kids might not think it's … fun. Helping, finding things that are wrong but fixing them." Vaughn also said to students, "I mean, be smart, walk in places that are lit and if they aren't lit, tell somebody about it." Her friend Thomas Tracy said, "This was actually very useful, we got to meet other people, alumni who are involved with Longwood and we also get to give our perspectives, as students, [about] how safe we feel Longwood actually is."
Darlene Bratcher pointed out, "Safety has got to be our primary concern. I preach it year round because of my program." She added, "There are things you can't see in the day time, I feel it's something."
Finally, Matthew Hovey and Angela Faulks spoke on various points of their experience with the walk. Faulks, who acts as the SGA historian, said, "I'm here actually as a student volunteer … [ the SGA] talked about it and I can take back some of these ideas … it's nice to see that people are actually being proactive on campus." Hovey said the use of the safety walks stemmed from " the concerns we had last year with students getting injured by predators, us taking account of all the places that predators could be, I feel it's helpful to students and faculty and just makes our campus safer at night. Having known from involvement in the Student Outreach Committee, a subcommittee of the Sustainability Committee in SGA, Hovey had known about the event for a few weeks. He also noted that, upon coming to Longwood, Hovey heard that the school was second safest after VMI, but humorously noted that was because they had guns. Hovey said, "I think we're always doing new things to keep safety up."
At the end of the night, the event was a success and provided Longwood something between a low-key risk management and neighborhood watch. Most importantly, though, it gave us a way to participate in the process of how Longwood is organized and maintained and maybe more so than students ever have before. With events like this, perhaps the disparate populations of Longwood and the campus itself will become far dearer and far less alien to us all.
