By Dave Taylor, Indiana State University

Indiana State University has made the 2016 Safe Campus Top 25 List by the National Campus Safety Summit. The list recognizes college and university units for improving campus safety.
 
"They've proven an outstanding dedication to improving the safety of their students, faculty, staff, and visitors," Linda Shaw, Safe Campus Director, said. 
 
An advisory board of senior-level higher education administrators selects the Top 25 List from more than 4,700 eligible U.S. college or university administrative departments. Units are nominated based on efforts to improve campus safety for the student body.
 
Indiana State was recognized for its Designated Walker and SoberRide programs designed to help address concerns arising from “The Walk.” The unofficial Homecoming tradition has students, alumni and others walking from the Indiana State campus near downtown Terre Haute to Memorial Stadium. Participants stop at bars along the 2 ½-mile route, resulting in many arrests for alcohol-related offenses and medical calls to assist walkers who became ill.
 
In 2009, University Police and the Student Health Promotion office teamed up with Refreshment Services Pepsi to launch the Designated Walker program in which students who complete a bystander prevention program agree not to drink alcohol and assist fellow walkers who do drink. They do that by providing business cards of people walkers can call for help or by summoning police or medical personnel themselves if the walkers cannot.
 
The program began with 32 designated walkers and has since grown to more than 500.
 
SoberRide was launched in 2010 offering free taxi rides home for Walk participants.  More than 400 calls were received the first year, exceeding the ability of available cabs to meet demand. The next year, two 20-passenger buses replaced the cabs to accommodate more walkers.
 
“As a result of the Designated Walker program and SoberRide, the number of arrests, medical calls and incidents of property damage along Wabash Avenue has declined and Homecoming is now a much safer event for everyone,” said Michele Barrett, assistant police chief. “It’s a great honor to be recognized by Safe Campus. We commend Sgt. Jacque Smith and Aimee Janssen-Robinson, former associate director for of student wellness, for developing and implementing these programs.”

Indiana State University
 
People attending this year’s Indiana State University Homecoming football game Oct. 17 will have the opportunity to be part of the official history of the university’s sesquicentennial era.
 
“We’ll be doing what I call ‘fly by’ oral histories,” said Cinda May, chair of special collections with Cunningham Memorial Library. “We’re going to ask people to stop, give us their name, the class they graduated or will graduate with and what their favorite memory is of ISU or Homecoming.”
 
Faculty and staff at Indiana State are also invited to participate.
 
May and Cassidy Crawford, a junior from Greencastle majoring in history and English, will have a video camera at Tent City on the Memorial Stadium grounds to record the oral histories as part of an independent study project with the university’s history department. They’re hoping to be set up near the Alumni Association tent.
 
“We’re also interested in identifying people who might want to have a more extended conversation about their experience and involvement with ISU,” May said. “We’re starting to collect oral histories for the overall sesquicentennial era, and all of them will go into university archives and be available in the future for people to use and listen to. I’ve always wanted to do this, and this is the first chance I’ve had to engage folks at Homecoming and get pieces of their story.”
 
Homecoming weekend will usher in a five-year celebration of the 150th anniversary of the period marking the founding of the university in 1865 and the start of classes in 1870.