The men and women of STCs Office of Safety and Security work hard every day to keep all five of South Texas College’s campuses and other properties safe for its 30,000+ students and thousands more community members attending events and activities. And now they are going to get a little extra help, from you. The college’s new Rave Eyewitness system allows STC students and employees to anonymously report suspicious activity or situations on campus via text message.
“It’s been proven that when community members are given the chance to anonymously report crime via text message, they are much more likely to participate in the process,” explained Paul Varville, STC director of security. “Our whole goal is to make our campuses as secure as possible.”
When a message comes into the STC Rave Eyewitness system, it converts the caller ID to a random code that protects the identity of the person sending the message to ensure all texts are kept confidential. The college’s security team may respond to received texts with follow up questions or information.
In addition to the Rave Eyewitness system, the college is also introducing STC Rave Guardian, which is aimed at students, faculty and staff members who want to provide information to assist the security department in responding to them or those with medical conditions or other security concerns. STC community members can opt into the program by creating a user profile, which will be entered into a database. If a participant calls a hotline number, the college’s Security Office will receive an alert with information provided by the user. The STC Rave Guardian system will help security team members geo-locate the participant via cell phone GPS and they will be able to summon appropriate medical or law enforcement support.
“This is a great feature for members of our STC community who want to make us aware of their personal situation or have medical conditions or may have other special security concerns,” explained Varville. “We encourage STC students and employees to provide information that will help us in responding and ensure we can provide the best level of assistance to them in any emergency”.
In addition to these new security systems, the college has a variety of security measures in place at all of its campus locations to address the safety and security concerns of STC community members.
“We have DPS troopers, municipal police officers, and security guards stationed prime locations at all of our campuses throughout the school day so that we can respond quickly to incidents. We also have digital video surveillance that allows us to zoom in on particular locations,” Varville said. We have emergency call boxes on campus that will sound an alarm with a flash light. And if a student, at any time, feels they need an escort to their car, they can contact our dispatch office and we will send a security officer to walk with them.”
Students and STC’s faculty and staff are encouraged to call the college’s Dispatch Hotline at 956-872-2589 to report issues on campus or send a text message through the college’s Rave Eyewitness system by using the address 67283 and entering “stctip” with a space before the message to be sent.
For more information about opting into the college’s Rave Guardian Program, students, faculty and staff are encouraged to contact the college’s Security Department at 956-872-2589 or visit safety.southtexascollege.edu or http://finance.southtexascollege.edu/security/index.html.
