While some students have inquired about increased safety measures at night, Campus Directory Bob Morgan says such measures are thankfully unnecessary.
During fall quarter there are approximately 240 students living on the Beatrice campus. Unlike the Lincoln campus, the Beatrice campus does not have cameras in the buildings or in the parking lot.
What the campus does have is a security guard on duty from 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. Sunday through Thursday.
Milford has a similar enrollment to Beatrice, but Lincoln has about 5,000 students.
This difference in numbers could explain why the Lincoln campus is the only one that has security cameras.
There are dorms at both Milford and Beatrice, but there are no security cameras in the dorms at either location.
Most students say they feel safe on campus, but some athletes who arrive back on campus late at night following a game have expressed concern.
Volleyball player Hillary Kostal said, “Yes, I feel safe most of the time, but it is a little scary. Since we are in a group it doesn’t bother me as much like it would if I was alone.”
The Beatrice Student Senate has discussed getting cameras installed in the parking lots on a few occasions, but any efforts have been unsuccessful.
Morgan said the need for cameras just isn’t there.
He explained there has not ever been any major incidents reported on the Beatrice campus, and the annual number of incident reports is very low.
“Our campus is a safe environment,” he said.
When asked if the college had ever solicited an estimate for cameras in the parking lot, Morgan said, “This campus has not.”
He explained, “The cost of cameras would be three fold. Not only would cameras be costly to put in place, but there is also an overhead when it comes to monitoring them. And it’s just not logical to do it in some buildings and not all of them, so we would have to be ready to put cameras in place in every building on campus.”