More than 47 new lights will be installed on campus during Winter and Spring Quarters to improve nighttime safety, Eugene Sunshine, senior vice president for business and finance, told Associated Student Government representatives this week.
By the end of February, 14 lights will be installed between Leverone Hall and the Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary parking lot, four between the Communications Residential College and Campus Drive and five around the John Evans Alumni Center, 1800 Sheridan Rd.
Some will be on walkways off Judson and Church streets. At least 24 more lights will be installed later this quarter and during Spring Quarter.
Sunshine said the construction of the new lights, which will cost “several hundred thousand dollars,” is not in response to any particular incident.
NU had a string of muggings last year and Fall Quarter. Partly in response to these incidents, the university installed 16 new lights along the east side of Sheridan Road from The Arch to the Jacobs Center.
Specific locations for the new lights come months after an ASG-sponsored “light walk” in November illustrating lighting problems on campus and in Evanston. Sunshine said ASG’s suggestions helped but were not officials’ only considerations.
Jill Sager, a co-planner of the walk and a Hillel Cultural Life senator, said she was glad plans include Sheridan Road north of Leverone and the Hinman-Sheridan crosswalk.
“There’s been so much positive feedback from the students on the quality of lighting from The Arch to Kellogg,” Sager said. “Students were excited to see that maybe extend up north, and it looks that that might be happening. It definitely looks like they took into account the input of students on this, which is great.”
The Undergraduate Budget Priority Committee may recommend additional lighting to NU officials, including University President Henry Bienen, after its campus-wide survey, Sunshine said. The six-member committee presents requests based on student input.
Off campus, Sunshine said improved lighting is up to Evanston. He said NU already has installed more emergency blue phones on the Evanston Campus.
“We’ve done a lot of that and will continue to do more as time goes by, and what improvement might be made on city property is the city’s responsibility,” he said.
The city already has spent millions of dollars installing brighter light bulbs in existing fixtures, Ald. Elizabeth Tisdahl (7th) said. She said during the light walk ASG representatives proposed that NU build blue phones on city property and route them to University Police.
Other aldermen supported this proposal but were less excited by a recent revision recommending that the city pay most or all of the cost and that the phone lines should go directly to Evanston police, she said.
“I then said I felt that NU has to tell us exactly how much they were going to pay, and if we’re paying for it, I need our police department to tell us if they think this is necessary or not,” she said.
Patrick Keenan-Devlin, an ASG off-campus senator, said the original proposal was a miscommunication and that ASG is trying to persuade the city to approve installing blue phones.
Tisdahl said some recommendations made during November’s light walk may not be implemented because residents are reluctant to have brighter lighting near their homes.
Reach Tina Peng at [email protected].
