Goucher College
- Health & Safety

Not the best..

As far as safety, you can always see security guards all over campus. But I wouldn't say I actually felt safe. Someone broke into my room and stole one of our laptops while my roommates and I were sleeping. And I got back to my room once to see someone trying to pick my lock.

The health office can handle minor things, but there was one incident where my roommate fell and broke her arm and when I went to the health office for help, they simply told me to call an ambulance because they didn't have an x-ray machine. In my opinion, they should have sent someone over at least to make sure she was okay.

Pub Safe

Public Safety is viewed as a joke by most students. However, as of late they've been cracking down. Especially on drug/alcohol violations and noise complaints. It's pretty easy to get away with a lot of things at Goucher, but random room searches are known to happen.

as for "safety", it is ridiculously easy for non-students to get on campus, there is virtually no check in, and anyone can come and go as they please. In fact on the weekends and early mornings, you will often see towson/baltimore locals walking their dogs or running on Campus. With that being said, I have never felt unsafe on Campus. You need a scan key to get into the dorms, and if you lock your room there is no problem with theft.

Public Safety are very helpful with finding lost items, letting you into your room when locked out, and assisting lost/confused freshman.

we have a "no chase policy" and if you are respectful they often let you go with a warning.

P.S. "Robo-Cop"'s bark is way worse than his bite.

Safe... Only Because Nothing Has Happened. Yet.

I have been here for only one semester and the state of campus security has given me cause for concern. The much-vaunted Public Safety department is severely understaffed, do not possess much power in apprehending misbehaving students (they are not allowed to chase fleeing students) and extremely tardy with response times.

For one, it is clearly unacceptable to have personnel respond to a call in 30 minutes or more when the urbanized campus is relatively small. Secondly, where there is supposed to be a person watching vigilantly at the gate, oftentimes it is not uncommon to see someone in the gatehouse in all hours of the day and evening staring down at his laptop and waving cars through without bothering to check for campus ID or car stickers. There has even been a case of a homeless person who has lived in the campus unhindered for six weeks before Public Safety finally made the decision to escort him out.

Vandalism is rife throughout the campus and residents of the halls have to collectively pay for damages while the school administration has shown titanic reluctance in implementing tougher and more effective security measures. Students have also shown unreasonable resistance towards the idea of security cameras in any way, shape or form, and both students and administration have clung to the irrational idea that anonymous reporting would resolve the vandalism issue altogether.

All in all, the campus is safe only because the students in general are reasonable towards each other, and there are few visitors from outside of campus. The school, however, may seem incapable of responding to any real crises should one ever occur.