HUCEP in Review

A little more than a year has passed since the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) and College administrators created the Harvard University Campus Escort Program (HUCEP). During that time, the program has been tinkered with, but throughout its existence thus far, HUCEP has been a boon to Harvard.

HUCEP helps increase the safety of students. A HUCEP escort provides the benefit of safety in numbers to someone walking alone. However, as the number of called-in escorts has fallen, some have taken to disparaging the program. While higher numbers of escorts are obviously preferable, critics miss the greatest benefit of the HUCEP program which is the presence and visibility of the escorts. The benefits are both psychological and real. On their nightly walks, escorts are always watching for any suspicious or dangerous behavior. Sometimes, according to escort Bailes L. Brown ’07, HUPD gives escorts descriptions of suspects in a robbery and tells walkers to keep a look out for them. Yet just the sight of escorts in bright neon jackets walking around the River, Yard, and Quad instills a sense of comfort and safety in students who are out late at night.

HUCEP is also superior to the now defunct SafetyWalk program because HUCEP employees are paid as opposed to the volunteers in the student-run SafetyWalk. This, along with the fact that HUCEP is managed by HUPD, brings stability to HUCEP, ensuring that the service will not disappear without anyone knowing, as SafetyWalk did.

Because of these benefits, HUCEP should extend its hours, as Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II discussed doing last year, to incorporate what he called a sliding schedule. This would mean moving up the starting hours of HUCEP to dusk and changing the hours a few times throughout the year to coincide with the changes in daylight.

Unfortunately, at the beginning of this year, the starting hours of HUCEP were cut. According to HUPD spokesman Steven G. Catalano, “The hours were changed to reflect when the most requests were coming in and when the most escorts took place.” But this line of reasoning fails to recognize the benefits that come from just having HUCEP on the streets. As Brown stated, “The greatest thing we do is our presence.” Furthermore, he correctly pointed out that many of the indecent assaults that happened last year occurred before the current start time of HUCEP.

The only serious criticism that the HUCEP program faces is the charge that some escorts take long breaks while on duty, and are not out on the street. The extent of this problem is widely debated, but what is more important is that HUPD has taken these allegations seriously. HUCEP escort Emily M. Mott ’07 said that escorts were periodically reminded of their responsibilities, they were forwarded complaints via e-mail when they came in, and they were also checked up on occasionally by HUPD. According to Mott, this has had a sizable impact on the number of escorts who neglected their duties. Nevertheless, most of the responsibility of ensuring escorts are out on the streets falls to the escorts themselves. As Catalano pointed out, “There is a certain amount of checking we do, but we don’t want to micromanage the program. We treat students as mature adults. We tell them, ‘You’ve taken this job, you know what the responsibilities of the job are.’” This is the right position, and we call on all escorts to meet their duties to the best of their ability.

HUCEP deserves praise because it is a strong program that helps the Harvard community feel and become safer. We ask all students to take advantage of the great service HUCEP provides.