Key Findings from Campus Safety and Security Survey
How safe and secure do University of Bonn students and staff feel? What places make them feel afraid? And how can they be made to feel safer? Seeking full answers to these questions, the University of Bonn ran a survey last year. The information provided by 1,120 respondents has now been analyzed and a total of 1,256 places identified. Students made up over half of the respondents (56.9 percent), followed by technical and administrative staff (16.6 percent) and academic staff (14 percent).
The results demonstrate that most of the people surveyed feel safe. Nevertheless, the University of Bonn has acted on the suggestions put forward by respondents and has taken specific steps to make people feel even safer.
The main findings at a glance
- Women feel less safe at the University than men.
- International respondents said that they felt less safe than their German counterparts.
- When asked about what made them feel afraid or in danger, around half of those surveyed mentioned people behaving threateningly toward them, poor lighting and—some way behind—places that were often deserted or where the ground was uneven or treacherous.
- The most-cited improvements related to lighting and the on-site presence of security staff and the forces of law and order (Campus Security and the police).
- The place that garnered by far the most mentions was the Hofgarten (25 percent of all mentions).
Defining a “fear-inducing space”
It is not possible to come up with a blanket definition of a “fear-inducing space,” i.e. somewhere in public that makes someone feel afraid or unsafe, because this will always depend on their individual feelings and past experiences. Structural and socio-spatial conditions are other important factors, however, meaning that places that are insufficiently lit or confusingly laid out will quickly trigger fear, especially in the dark. But a person’s sense of safety and security can also be influenced by how many—and what kind of—people frequent a particular place.
Making structural modifications can stop places causing anxiety, while public-facing measures that raise everyday awareness of the existence of “fear-inducing spaces” and that inform the action taken by public institutions can help prevent them from arising in the first place.
Improvements suggested
- Installing and improving lighting
- On-site presence of Campus Security
- CCTV
- Improved signage
- Entry checks and emergency hotlines
- Making places more lively, e.g. by setting up cafés
- More frequent cleaning
Measures identified
Central Administration has identified several major opportunities for improvement from the survey findings and has already implemented numerous measures:
- Ensuring that Campus Security can be contacted round the clock on +49 228 73-7444 and advertising this number on notice boards and signs
- Recruiting additional staff to enable Campus Security to be present for longer and in greater numbers on campus sites and in buildings, especially in places commonly identified as inducing fear
- Ensuring that the staff on duty are more easily visible and recognizable by giving them all the same uniform
- Making organizational changes to the security setup; digital control and documentation
- Adding lighting in the Hofgarten by installing two light poles with spotlights
- Increasing the lighting around the University Main Building
- Improving the lighting in the highway underpass beneath Gerhard-Domagk-Straße near the Chemical Institutes
- Working with the City of Bonn authorities
Downloads
You can download the results of the study here.