Recently the Harding University Public Safety Office distributed their annual campus security report. The report, which included statistics for on and off campus criminal offenses, alcohol-related offenses and weapon offenses, proved that Harding’s campus has a very low crimerate and overall is a safe and crime-free university.
After reviewing the report, it appears that Harding’s Public Safety is trying their best to keep our campus safe. In the report, they included steps for students to take for turning in burglaries, missing student alerts and various other crimes. The Public Safety department also offers free self-defense classes to female students, so the department seems to be on top of its game. And that is why I am questioning why one particular area lacks security: the campus laundry mats.
While several of the girls’ dorms now include laundry facilities on each floor, excluding Cathcart, Pattie Cobb and Kendall, many of the guys’ dorms do not offer the same facilities. Actually none of the men’s residence halls offer laundry except for Cone Hall. Instead Harding’s website lists every one of the men’s halls as being “close to coin-operated laundry mat.” They even list the women’s dorm Pattie Cobb as being “close to coin-operated laundry mat.” I used to live there; believe me, it’s not.
Why am I even writing about this though? Simple. While many students have the option of never having to leave their dorm to do laundry, many students still don’t have a choice in the matter and have to resort to using the laundry mats. The problem with this is that there is absolutely no security offered in these facilities, which are also open to the public. Yes, it is well lit in the inside of the building, but anyone can use the laundry mats. Anyone off the street in Searcy can walk in: and I mean anyone.
I remember freshman and sophomore year walking into the laundry mat to do my week’s worth of laundry, only to walk right back out until I could find someone else to go with or until the obvious non-Harding people left. Students should not have to be afraid of doing their laundry.
All dorms on campus now require card access, the Ganus Athletic Center gym requires student I.D. and various other buildings require some sort of student I.D. All buildings on campus have security cameras beside the dorms, so why aren’t the laundry mats card-access only and why don’t they have security cameras?
Maybe Harding makes money by opening their laundry mats to people outside of the Harding community, but students pay a large amount of money to attend a smaller school with greater public safety. Harding needs to implement public safety for their students in all aspects of college living; even if that means implementing security into the simplest of things, such as while students are doing their laundry.
