UP offers students safe late-night walks home

BY ALEKSANDRA SIDOROVA Managing & News Editor

University Police’s Safe Walk service fully launched this semester, allowing students to request to get escorted by their peers, who are safety ambassadors and work in pairs Thursday through Saturday, 11 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Students are always able to call UP and request to be escorted from one point on campus to another, but the Safe Walk service gives students the option of walking with their peers instead of an officer. The service can be accessed by scanning a QR code on Safe Walk posters or on the SUNY Plattsburgh website.

According to UP Investigator Jessica Facteau, who manages the program, Safe Walk was designed based on a survey conducted by Associate Professor of Teacher Education

Michelle Bonati, which found that students would be more receptive to being escorted from one place to another by their peers than police officers and they would be more likely to utilize the service weekend nights.

Five students are currently Safe Walk ambassadors, sporting reflective bright-red jackets when they’re on the job. Four of them are paid — Dineshreddy and Shantan Channapareddy, Haleyann Ortiz and Kenneth Baez — and one, Paula Cucaita, receives academic credit for her work as a UP intern.

Now, however, the club has regained active status and its officers have been trained. All remaining steps, such as revising the club constitution and submitting a budget, should be complete by the end of April, Avery said. Quake’s new adviser is Communication Studies Lecturer James Ward.

Besides the name change, Quake has shifted its creative direction to become a “hub for all things media,” in the words of Quake President Garrett Jones. By getting off the radio air and instead offering ondemand podcasting con- tent, Quake is adjusting to a new media landscape while staying true to its mission of producing quality audio-based content — “keeping the radio aspect alive.” Quake also saves thousands of dollars that would go to radio station licensing fees.

“Radio, as a format that we know, when you’re in your car listening to a DJ, is still happening, but it’s definitely changing. We’re seeing that more people are consuming podcasts — they want to listen to things on-demand when they’re ready to,” Quake Executive Producer Melissa Forte said. “Right now, podcasting is so lucrative. It’s so accessible to so many people, so it only makes sense that WQKE moves into Quake Productions and adapts.”

Quake currently has the first installments of two podcast shows on its YouTube channel and SoundCloud account: “Various Voices,” where students discuss the end of WQKE, and “Pay it Forward,” featuring ‘14 SUNY Plattsburgh alumnus Trevor Kent, who now works in Los Angeles. Jones said there are plans for a show hosted in Spanish. Forte looks forward to producing content that is both informative and entertaining, aiming to showcase the racial, ethnic, gender and religious diversity of the SUNY Plattsburgh body.