Evanston neighborhood streets could use a few street lights. And by a few, I mean several hundred.

By day, Evanston is a beautiful, quaint and sunny town. By night, it’s a terrifying pit of darkness, especially within neighborhoods near campus. This makes for an extremely dangerous environment for students living off campus, many of whom do not have cars and whose extracurricular activities (The Daily, for example), keep them on campus into the late hours of the night – after campus shuttles have already stopped running.

In the past year alone, there have been at least six instances of robbery, assault and trespassing affecting NU students in Evanston.

Four of these crimes occurred off campus. Almost all of them occurred at night. In addition, there are more than 50 Emergency Blue Light Phones located throughout the Evanston NU campus, several on the same block. There are only eight of these security phones located off campus, from Davis Street all the way to Noyes Street, and none located west of Maple Avenue.

Clearly, the discrepancy in safety between campus streets and off campus streets is a large – and seemingly largely ignored – one. Even just installing more lights and more emergency contact towers could potentially ensure the well-being of such a significant portion of the NU student body. It would at least give us more peace of mind.

-Annie Chang, Print Managing Editor