Volunteers take part in annual lighting walk at UC Davis to keep campus safe
DAVIS — Dozens of students and staff at UC Davis were looking up Tuesday evening trying to find safety hazards on campus on the school's annual lighting walk.
This is no ordinary evening stroll across campus. These volunteers have a dark assignment: looking for areas that lack outdoor lighting.
Teams of students and staff comb the college grounds trying to spot exterior lights that are obscured by trees or have burnt-out bulbs.
"This is where we can really tap into the whole campus community to get involved and help us identify the problems," said Joshua Morejohn with UC Davis utilities and engineering.
This survey is an effort called crime prevention through environmental design, using light to help increase safety at night.
"It eliminates dark places on campus where people can hide," Morejohn said.
"We do have incidents on campus and so the lighting is here to deter those," said Jeff Rott, the systems security director with campus police.
The university stretches across more than 5,000 and has more than 55,000 people each day. In 2021, there were 49 cars stolen and more than 140 burglaries on campus.
But there are no plans to oversaturate the school with lights. The university says it complies with "dark sky" standards, which are rules designed to stop light pollution.
"So the light is focused towards the ground as opposed to the stars," Rott said. "The idea is that it lights the area around you but it still allows you to see the stars up in the sky."
Volunteers didn't have to go far to find problems. There were several burnt-out bulbs just in the main quad area and many students say this type of lighting survey is a bright idea.
"For student safety and well-being, I think that's a good precaution that people are taking," one student said.
"We pay a lot of money for tuition and our safety should be the college's number one priority," another student said.
The university said high-priority lights that are malfunctioning will be replaced within a week, while others could take several weeks to fix.