UGA campus murder: Online petition demands emergency blue light boxes on campus

CLARKE COUNTY, Ga. - After the brutal murder of a 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student on the University of Georgia's campus last week, there is a new online push for increased safety measures on UGA's campus.

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A student initiated an online petition calling for the installation of emergency blue light boxes. These boxes enable a person in distress to push a button to call the police. 

According to the student, the lights can instantly contact the police and deter crime. As of 11:30 a.m. Monday, the petition has more than 25,000 signatures. 

The campus used to have emergency call boxes, but those have been removed, according to UGA's website.

UGA says it was one of the first campuses in the nation to install emergency call boxes in 1988. The call box system utilized analog technology.

In the early 2000s, telephone systems transitioned from analog to digital. In 2004, the university learned that their phone system would no longer support analog, and it would cost several hundred thousand dollars to upgrade the system.

The university says it looked into how many calls had been made in the previous eight years from the boxes and discovered that UGA police only received seven calls, and none of them were emergencies.

They also examined the cellphone ownership statistics for Americans between the ages of 18 and 29, finding that 100% of Americans in that age group owned cellphones in 2018.

The decision was made to provide a mobile phone safety app to students, faculty, staff, and visitors called UGA Safe. The app offers location sharing, information during emergencies, allows users to report information directly to the police via text or call, includes a mobile blue light, and more.

Not all Georgia colleges have moved away from blue light boxes. Georgia State University in Atlanta reportedly installed more than 50 new blue light towers on their campus in July 2023.

According to Georgia Tech's website, they have 555 blue light emergency phones across their entire campus.

Morehouse College has 14 blue light emergency boxes, and Spelman College also has emergency call boxes according to their respective websites.

Additionally, the University of North Georgia still uses emergency call boxes.