The University of Saskatchewan (U of S) has launched a mobile safety app aiming to battle sexual assaults on campus to coincide with their sexual assault awareness week campaign. The app, titled “uSafe,” will provide students and school employees access to a wide variety of information and support services.
Peter Hedley, the director of support services at U of S, said that while the app’s primary goal is to ensure safety and prevent cases of sexual assault from happening on campus, connecting students and employees to various support services is equally important.
“One of the things we wanted to do was to reach out to our multiple campuses to provide students with the right connections and support,” Hedley said. The app, he said, connects students with university services, but also community services like hospitals.
According to Hedley, the app is connected to “local specialized sexual assault centres in Saskatoon, Prince Albert and Regina where our campuses are located.”
“We’re trying to provide that level of visibility,” he added.
The app offers users access to services such as crisis shelters, student counselling services, student health services, sexual assault and information centres, and Crime Stoppers.
One of the key features of the app is a virtual “safe walk,” where users can share a link to their location on a map with a family member or friend who is then able to track their movement and position in real time.
“With the virtual safe walk, it doesn’t matter if your mom is in Halifax. She can still safe walk you home and she would still have the awareness if there is a problem during a safe walk,” Hedley said. “If the phone cuts off, it actually sends the person watching them their coordinates, but also offers them an immediate option to make an emergency call on your behalf.”
Users have access to an emergency call button option that immediately directs them to campus security or police, according to Emmanuel Barker, the University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union (USSU) vice-president (operations and finance).
“The emergency beacon button actually uses a geofence that we have around campus, so if you’re on there, it uses your cell phone location to determine which emergency contact you want to use,” Barker said. “If you’re on campus it goes straight to campus protective services, or if you’re off campus, it calls 911.”
Barker said he developed the concept for the safety app last year after he and his predecessor discussed ideas for connecting students with services offered by the USSU.
He said the union collaborated with the university to flesh out the app.
“We both realized that we just wanted to comprehensively offer information and security to students,” Barker said.
He said he hopes the release of the app, along with U of S’s sexual assault awareness campaign, will encourage other universities to help take a stand against sexual assault.
“It’s my greatest hope that universities across Canada will see that we take sexual assault very seriously . . . it’s not just a Saskatchewan issue, it’s international and it needs to be addressed,” he said.
