On Saturday night around 3 a.m., a man was shot outside Binghamton’s Kennedy Fried Chicken located at 159 Main Street. Though you might live within a few blocks of this establishment, you likely didn’t hear about the shooting. The shooter fled the scene, in the middle of a heavily populated student neighborhood. Yet a majority of students walked home from the bars that night clueless to recent events.

This is knowledge that Binghamton University students need. The city is certainly reinventing itself as a college town, but with that expansion comes an increase in responsibility to keep students safe. If there’s a shooting in a part of the West Side or the South Side that borders a student neighborhood, it is the responsibility of the University to get that information to students as soon as the police respond to the 911 call.

Sure, those of us who live off-campus receive Off Campus College Council emails, but these notifications — while informative — are not helpful in a situation when danger could possibly be around the corner. In addition, it is not only off-campus students who would benefit from these alerts; every student who goes Downtown on weekends should be well-informed.

The University has the ability to send out mass texts — many of us have Rave alerts sent to our cell phones — so there’s no feasible reason why it cannot let us know when a violent crime happens within city limits. Students aren’t going to be checking the news on their phones while they’re in a bar at 1 a.m., but they will check a text message.
An alert like this might help ensure that a student recruits some friends to walk back home with him or her, rather than travel alone.

The Editorial Board certainly isn’t advocating alarmist alerts that could set off mass hysteria on State Street — rather, stern warnings that encourage caution. We believe that an informed student population — even a fearful student population — trumps a naive student population. The possible overreaction that could come from an informative, clear and concise alert trumps rumor-ridden, second-hand knowledge running rampant around the bars. It is a safer option to keep everyone up to date, so that everyone has the full story.

It is a simple precaution to take that is also well within the resources that are currently in place at the University. An alert system is an easy way to keep students safe as they move into the Downtown community and are immersed in the city surrounding BU.