Universities and colleges nationwide have been embracing campus safety in the digital age by joining forces with the app BlueLight.

The app allows students to connect with campus public safety departments and other emergency services with the touch of a finger. Marquette University is one of the schools that has adopted the app. Last semester, the school worked with the app creator and beta-tested the app before its launch on campus this month, said Kyle Whelton, the Marquette student government president.

Students at Marquette became worried early last semester when robberies and other crimes began happening on and near campus. Whelton, along with the Executive Vice President Natalie Pinkney, decided to take the initiative in finding a new, innovative way to alert the Department of Public Safety at the school in case of an emergency. In their research, they found BlueLight, Whelton said.

“We have more than 400 blue light (emergency) phones around campus, but of course, the world today has become digital,” said Tim Cigelske, the director of social media at Marquette University, in an email. “It makes sense to expand our offerings for how to contact Public Safety in an emergency, or just when you need to call them for any reason.”

The app also offers a function called “On My Way,” which allows an individual to send a contact of their choice an update when he or she is leaving for a destination, along with a Google map with their location to ensure their safe arrival and allow the other person to know in the event that something goes wrong, Cigelske said.

“Everyone is connected to their phones, so let’s make the most of that by providing students options that make sense in context of their habits,” he said.

In the two weeks following the launch of the app on Marquette’s campus on Jan. 12, there were roughly 600 downloads of the app. So far three or four calls to DPS have been made using the app, but this number is expected to grow as time moves on and students become more comfortable using the technology, Whelton said.

The app hasn’t received negative feedback to date, and one of the reasons it has been so successful with students is that this generation has become increasingly dependent on cellphones and technology, Whelton said. An app that prioritizes safety on the same device that college students are constantly interacting with for social and entertainment purposes is why BlueLight has been so effective, he added.

“Cellphones are an excellent tool in situations like this,” he said.

Another reason that the app has been so successful on college campuses is that it is the only app of its kind that uses the GPS function on the smartphone to connect anyone using the app with the closest emergency service, whether it be on campus or off campus, Whelton said. Many more campuses around the country have requested the app come to their school, and so far it is active on 35 campuses nationwide. The app is available at limited locations because BlueLight is working with each of the schools to make it as effective as possible, but there should be a large increase in connected schools over the next month and a half, said Preet Anand, the creator and CEO of BlueLight.

Future goals of the BlueLight app include extending to every campus in the United States, hopefully by the end of this year, as well as exploring the possibility of making BlueLight available to students while on study abroad trips, Anand said.

Published on January 29, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact Erin: eemcdona@syr.edu