BENTONVILLE -- Northwest Arkansas Community College has adopted a mobile app officials say will enhance safety for everyone on campus.
The LiveSafe app allows users to communicate anonymously through text messaging with the college's Police Department to report a crime, threat, safety hazard or other concerns.
Users may add a picture or an audio or video file to their messages.
Ethan Beckcom, the college's director of institutional policy, risk management and compliance, said the text message focus addresses discomfort many students have with picking up their phones and calling for assistance.
"If it's too difficult for them to tell us about something of concern, then they're just not," Beckcom said. "Then we can't do our job as effectively as we want to."
There may be times when instructors want a police officer to come to their classroom -- if a student is being disruptive, for example -- but they are not in a position where they feel comfortable calling, Beckcom said. The location of the call is automatically communicated to public safety officials.
"They can message us directly," he said. "We get that instantly, and then we can go to them."
About 120 colleges and universities across the country use the LiveSafe platform. Northwest Arkansas Community College is the only school in Arkansas to adopt it so far, according to Lucas Wiseman, a LiveSafe spokesman.
The college pays $16,000 per year for the service, making the app free to all students, employees and anyone else in the community who wishes to register, Beckcom said.
The app has other features, including buttons that will connect a user by phone to local 911 service and the closest police department. It also provides links to a campus map, information on counseling services and instructions on what to do in case of an emergency.
College safety officials can use the platform to send messages to the app's users and can customize the message so that it goes only to people within a certain geographic area. If a disaster hit a country where a group of students were studying abroad, the college could send a message to each of the app's users in that country asking if anyone there needs assistance.
Baylea Birchfield, 20, of Bentonville is a student at the college pursuing a degree in business marketing. She said she has downloaded and tested the app with her friends and family. She said she appreciates the convenience of its SafeWalk feature, which allows family members and friends to monitor a person's progress while walking to a specific location on a real-time map.
"My favorite part about LiveSafe is the ability to share my location even if I am not on campus," Birchfield said. "I can be walking through a dark parking lot or going for a run around town and still allow my friends and family to track me on my outings.
"This app gives me an extra sense of safety when I am traveling alone."
More than 250 people associated with the college had downloaded the app by last week. The college plans to make special efforts this semester to encourage people to download the app, Beckcom said.
LiveSafe was co-founded by Kristina Anderson, a survivor of the Virginia Tech University shooting of April 16, 2007, that killed 32 people. Anderson was shot three times.
In 85 percent of cases of extreme violence on college campuses, such as the Virginia Tech shooting, somebody knew something that could have prevented it, Beckcom said.
At the college, LiveSafe replaces the In Case of Crisis app, Beckcom said.
Teresa Taylor, the college's ethics and compliance officer and Title IX director, said In Case of Crisis provided good information but was not as useful as LiveSafe. The ability to report tips anonymously through the app is a big deal, she added.
"So many people are afraid, especially when it comes to sexual assault and domestic violence," Taylor said. "They want to tell, but they don't want everyone to know it was them who told.
"LiveSafe puts in the hands of our faculty and staff and students another tool to file a report maybe they don't want to be attached to."
Statistics show incidents of serious crime are rare at the college, which typically enrolls about 8,000 students per semester.
In 2014, the main campus in Bentonville reported one case of domestic violence. Satellite campuses in Rogers and Springdale reported three arrests for drug-abuse violations and one case of aggravated assault. The crimes were reported by the college under the Jeanne Clery Act, which requires all colleges and universities that receive federal funding to share information about crime on campus.
State Desk on 09/06/2016