Safety

Springfield College Turns to Mobile App for Campus Safety

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 05/11/15

Springfield College has adopted a new app designed to improve campus safety for nearly 6,000 students, faculty and staff.

Located in Springfield, MA, the school chose to deploy Rave Mobile Safety's Guardian Campus Safety App.

"Rave Guardian lets users create a virtual safety network of friends, roommates, family and campus safety," according to a news release. "Users can then set a 'Safety Timer' session. Once activated, 'personal guardians' in a virtual safety network can monitor a user's status updates and location, and be notified at assigned check-in times. If the timer expires, or the user initiates a panic call, Rave Guardian automatically notifies trusted safety resources on campus."

Other features of the app include:

• Two-way anonymous messaging with the ability to send text and images;
• A "safety connect" button that automatically connects a user to campus safety personnel and displays the user's profile and GPS location; and
• The ability for students to create their own safety profiles, with information such as home address and medical conditions, to improve responses.

"As a large school in an urban area, there is a lot happening on campus and outside influences also impact safety," said Michael Sullivan, executive director of public safety at Springfield College, in a prepared statement. "Rave Guardian gives our security team incredible reach. Its reliability and ease-of-use in emergency situations made it the clear choice. Our campus community is thoroughly connected via the Guardian app, and because users can also text us with anonymous tips, we're able to enlist the eyes and ears of students, faculty and staff to further our safety efforts."