Izzy Bosworth

Blue light boxes have been on campuses and universities to help keep students

and faculty safe from crimes happening and help decrease the rates of crime. Blue light

boxes are large, tall blue boxes that have a blue light on the top so you can see them

from further away. There is a big red button on them that you can press that will notify

campus and there is also a speaker in most of the models so you would be able to

communicate with the officer. The blue light that is on the top of the light box will also

flash to help the officer get to the right location or track where the person is moving.

Some of them will also have a wide angle camera installed so the dispatcher can

visually see what is happening and is set in motion when the panic button is pressed.

The operation of the Blue light box systems goes back to the 1980’s because it

was a time when campus security had been facing some careful examination because

of the high profile murder case of Jeanne Clery. After the death of Jeanne Clery there

was a lot of demand to do something more to keep students safe and With the large

demand the University of Illinois at Chicago had gotten in touch with some inventors to

see if that could come up with a system for college campuses to lower crime around

schools. By the ‘90s there had been more blue lights around different campuses

The blue light boxes reached a height of popularity around 2010-2011 but by that

time universities were rethinking the blue light box system and the universities were

questioning if the cost of the blue light boxes outweighed the safety and usage of them.

To install them around the campuses were $20,000 and about $1000 a year to maintain

and the students were using them for prank calls more than real emergencies. Now,
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with all the new technology, colleges and universities are using campus safety apps

instead of the blue light system (Mock, 2021).

Theoretically the blue box system appears like it is a really effective way of

keeping students and faculty safe while on campus. Although with today's technology

safety apps are becoming a more successful way,as well as popular, for many reasons,

especially the fact that the bulk of students and faculty would be carrying their phones

with their person at all times and it would be a more productive way than finding a blue

light tower on campus. The blue light boxes around campuses are not always near each

other and it could take a couple minutes to find the next blue light. There has been

research done on the blue light system to see if they actually enhanced safety

measures like the study done at Rice University on the blue light system and the rate of

crime on campuses. That specific study had come to the determination that with having

blue light system the rate of crime has decreased, but the amount of sexual assault

cases have gone up, because students feel safer reporting those kinds of crime. It

appears that even though technology is changing, students feel safer on campus with

the blue light system and that crimes on campus are going down. (Scaccia, 2020)

The blue light system was thought of and created to protect the students and

faculty/staff and to decrease crime around the campuses. The hypothesis is that having

more blue light boxes around campus will keep all campuses safer from any forms of

crime and help many students. The blue light system would also be able to help campus

safety to track the direction of the person if they have to run and get away from
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someone else. It is important that when you go to college you feel safe enough walking

around campus and that if you need help for whatever reason, you will be able to get

that help as soon as possible at any point, day or night. The studies done on this have

proven that they have been working and doing what they were supposed to.

In an article by Alsalem and Al-Eissa (2018) the researchers examined that blue

light systems are essential for college campuses. Also that these towers can prevent

crime on campuses, to some degree, by giving the officer the exact location. The goal of

this study is to figure out what the right amount of distance is between each of the blue

light phones based on the area size based on the seven different campuses at the

Claremont campuses. Then wanting to compare the data from the towers from the

areas that are more covered to the ones that are less covered with towers.

The key hypothesis in this article by Alsalem and Al-Eissa (2018) was that

universities were moving away from blue light towers and would start using new types of

technologie that would potentially be cost effective and if it was providing safety for the

students, faculty and staff. In this study about overdose kits, the hypothesis in the topic

can be addressed in the literature about the naloxone kits being available to everyone

by placing one at every blue light phone to help with an opioid overdose. If those kits

were available at the blue light phones it could help keep many more students safe and

get them help faster.

Researchers Chris Linder and Marvette Lacy (2019) look more into if students

feel safe on campus. The study wants to use the safety measures on the campuses and
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try to educate students about the safety tools they do have and show them that they

work.

There had been a study done that was looking at San Jose State university and

the authors had found that there were 50 incidents on the campus that had taken place

over the past year. Kristen Muscat’s study hypothesis was that the question that she

wants to answer is if students feel safe around campus. In her study she wanted to

determine what safety measures are being taken to see if they are changing any kind of

safety. The theory of this is that the blue light towers would keep the students, faculty

and staff more safe around college campuses but had wanted to discover the right

amount of distance in between each tower. With more blue lights on campuses the

students, faculty and staff would be better able to locate one and get help faster if

needed. In the second study that was looked at, by M. Yabe (2016), the variables in the

study had been “this study developed choices for the analysis objects of the variables of

campus safety app functions and prices based on literature reviews and consultations

from the mobile app companies’’ (Yabe,Mel 2016).

This study had wanted to determine a difference between the blue light towers

and the student, and staff using safety apps. The theory of the naloxone kits study is

that if the blue light systems are a certain distance away from each other, having the life

saving kits on all the blue light phones would help the safety of the campus. Linder and

Lacy take data that had been collected from other studies and had started to build on
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from there. Their focus group had been the students, and they were trying to see how

safe the female student felt on campus. In A study by Shannon Jacobson, the variables

in her study had to do with the demographic characteristics of the students such as age,

race and gender.

The researchers who did the study on the distance that blue light systems

should be, had used information and data from other studies to help this study

determine what the right amount of distance is in between every blue light phone tower.

This study is leaning more towards keeping blue light towers and adding more in certain

areas. With this research, it makes people at universities, and other places with blue

light phones, actually think if the phones are as effective as if you had an app on your

phone. The majority of people have their phones on them at all times and if needed

could pull up a specific app on your phone.

The theory of the article about using the naloxone kit is that if the blue light

systems are a certain distance away from each other, having the life saving kits on all

the blue light phones would help the safety of the campus even more. In the study done

by Linder and Lacy they had mentioned what a student had told saying that her school

had taken away the blue lights, and with another focus group that included a

student,who was on student government, had brought up the cost of the blue light

phones and they started to cost a lot and that why they were taken away from campus.
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Not every study that was found did the same kind of study. There are a few

different types of studies that could be carried out and it's all contingent on what the

specific author is looking for. In the article by Khalaf Alsalem, and Abdullah Al-Eiss

(2018), they had done a field study. They had used the blue light towers locations and

the campus boundaries from a study that had been done before and used them in this

study as well as added some new towers. For this particular study they had added a few

new towers in other college campuses. The article that was written by Manak Yabe, the

research design had been by choice experiment. With a choice experiment you ask the

participants to choose one different approach from a set with a number of attributes and

different levels for each different approach. There had not been that many studies done

that had been about “regarding an analysis of dollar values toward campus safety apps”

(Yabe,M 2018) and the choice experiment is the one that is normally used to evaluate

the economic market valuation. In the study done about the Naloxone kits being at the

blue light towers, they had done focused on one location in particular and in the study

they had done a “geospatial analysis of accessibility” (Dworkis; Ritcheson; Tang; Raviv;

Fowler; Ellig; Goley; Arora 2019) of the blue light phones on a campus in Los Angeles,

CA. The authors of this study had used campus maps and had used the iphones “Mark

my location” to pinpoint all the Blue light phones. In all the studies that I looked at, the

type of research design can change and one way wont be used in every study, it would

depend what the authors thought would be the best option. Kristen Muscat had done a
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survey method to get the information she needed for her study. She gave her survey out

to students at Rowans university to determine if they feel comfortable at their campus.

In this study, researchers had used a few different geographic information systems

(GSI) technology. The analyses were done by the ArcGIS, and the analyses were used

to display how GSI can help in determining the distance between each tower. The

researchers had considered doing many different procedures before they chose one for

the analysis. Every layer had to be converted to feet to be able to receive accurate data.

The researchers used the GIS technology to determine the distance between the lights

around the Claremont colleges.

In the article about safety apps, the researchers used a choice experiment. This

kind of procedure is used to ask the participants to pick between one alternative from a

choice set with numbers linking to an attribute. The advantages to using this system is

that the questions must have an “opt- out” answer, and that the format of questions is

similar to buying patterns in the market. A disadvantage to choice experiments is that

many repeated questions can make the participants feeling too overwhelmed to answer.

In the article about the phone being supplied with naloxone kits, they had used a

geospatial analysis of accessibility to BLP on one campus in Los Angeles CA. To

receive the locations of the blue light phones on this campus they had used google

maps and the “find my location” feature located on the iphone. They had put different

radii around each blp and then they calculated the percentage of campus that was

covered. Then they had to find out the possible loss or diversion so they calculated the
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campus coverage after stimulating the random loss. In the article, Blue Lights and

Pepper Spray (Lindor, Lacy, 2019), the authors used a case study research design,

which had allowed them to use the data that they gathered in a variety of different ways,

including the focus group and it had gone over 18 months. A faculty member, doctoral

students, masters students, and undergraduate students were all participating in the

study. The researchers wanted the study to be good at gathering and analyzing the data

and They had met every other week to go over the data and the analyses.

In the study on smart campuses (Liu, Warade, Pai, Gupta, 2022) the researchers

did an automatic search between August 16, 2021 and August 21, 2021 on the digital

library. The authors wanted to be able to look at the technology and applications on the

campus. They restrict the articles that come up to articles that are peer reviewed, as

well as book chapters, and journal articles. Then they went back and expanded the time

the articles were written to 2010-2020 to be able to get more data. The articles were

also restricted to ones in english.

The article, Rowan university students' perceptions of campus safety, by C.

Muscat, looks at different universities to see if they are using safety apps or other forms

of safety measures while also looking at other factors where technology isn't as strong.

The author had looked at the text message method, but it became restricting because

you would have to give your phone number to the app that is being used and many

people don't want to put their phone numbers in (Muscat, 2011) . The different

campuses that do rely on technology to keep their students safe must obtain a fall back
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plan that is in order since technology is prone to fail at times. Montclair State University

which is located in New Jersey has established a curriculum that gives students special

cell phones that can only be used to contact the campus police. The majority of

universities don't have what it takes to obtain the texting program because, either they

don't have the manpower or the support behind getting it off the ground.

In the last study, by E. Leannais had carried out many interviews that her study

was based on. She had interacted with a couple current and past students as well as

many other participants variety in age and differing in sex (Leannais, 2008). Doing the

interview process she got to engage with the students and see how much they knew of

the blue lights scattered around their campus. Her studies also looked at the university

website she had discovered the lack of information that was on the website about the

Blue light phones and where they were on campus. To be able to get additional

information she had looked at other universities and colleges around the area and was

set side by side the amount to the information she had on her campus.

Having blue light phones around campuses does improve campus safety all

around. Since the start of the usage of the phones, crime around campuses has gone

down and there are plenty of studies done to show that. Also since the beginning of

them more students have felt safe talking about something that has happened to them

even if they don't use the BLP. Having them around campuses also helps deter crime

from happening, since it is easy for someone who needs help to just push the button on

the big blue tower as well as the camera that is installed in them. Even though modern
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technology keeps evolving but the blue light towers work on campuses and should be

kept on them until there are studies done that show that they are deterring crime on

campuses like they are now. Further down the line there could be updates made to the

BLP’s to improve its technology, to be able to keep them on campuses. Even if schools

start using more of the texting style for safety BLP would be a good backup system

since technology could be troubling at points. Although it can be expensive, blue light

phones have been shown to be really effective on campuses, as shown in the different

studies.
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References

​ 1) Alsalem, K., & Al-Eissa, A. (2018). Aisel - Aisel - Association for Information

Systems. Retrieved April 1, 2022, from

https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&=&context=siggis2018&

=&sei-redir=1&referer=https%253A%252F%252Fscholar.google.com%252Fscho

lar%253Fhl%253Den%2526as_sdt%253D0%252C40%2526q%253Dblue%252B

light%252Bphones%252Bcampus%252Bsafety#search=%22blue%20light%20ph

ones%20campus%20safety%22.

​ 2) DeWorkis,D.A.,Ritcheson,N.C.M.,Tang,W.,ellig,K.,Goley,S.,&Aurora,S.(2019, October

1). 158 Using Networks of Blue Light Phones for Deploying Naloxone Kits on a

College Campus . Define_me. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from

https://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644(19)30837-6/fulltext

​ 3) Leannais, E. (2008, March 4). Blue lights: Twinkling stars of safety or pillars of

antiquity? IDEALS @ Illinois. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/3740?show=full

​ 4) Lindor , C., & Lacy, M. (2019, September 20). Blue lights and pepper spray:

Cisgender college women's perceptions of Campus Safety and implications of the

"Stranger Danger" Myth. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00221546.2019.1664195
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​ 5) K. Liu, N. Warade, T. Pai and K. Gupta, "Location-aware smart campus security

application," 2017 IEEE SmartWorld, Ubiquitous Intelligence & Computing, Advanced &

Trusted Computed, Scalable Computing & Communications, Cloud & Big Data

Computing, Internet of People and Smart City Innovation

(SmartWorld/SCALCOM/UIC/ATC/CBDCom/IOP/SCI), 2017, pp. 1-8, doi:

10.1109/UIC-ATC.2017.8397588.

​ 6) Muscat, C. (2011). Rowan university students' perceptions of campus safety. Rowan

University students' perceptions of campus safety. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from

https://rdw.rowan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1312&context=etd

​ 7) yabe, M. (2016, July 5). Cost-benefit evaluation: Students', Faculty's, and

staff's willingness to pay for a campus safety app. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved

April 3, 2022, from

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10511253.2016.1203009