Emergency call boxes on the path from A building to L building
The emergency call boxes on the Humber Lakeshore campus have been out of service all winter long due to a fault in the phone line. As a result the emergency boxes running along the path from A building to L building have been covered in garbage bags.
The emergency call boxes run the entire path from one side of the campus to the other and are meant to be used in times of emergency.
Whenever a student feels unsafe the emergency boxes are used to make calls directly to the on campus security services.
With the above average freezing temperatures this winter Director of Public safety at Humber College Rob Kilfoyle says “because the ground is frozen it’s difficult to get at the conduit to actually trace where the fault is”.
Kilfoyle says the college does have a plan in place to fix the problem. They have been running into problems because where the phone line runs into A building is directly where the new sound proof sound booth is located in the new music studio.
“Garbage bags are not an excuse the school has tons and tons of money” says Humber PR student Maryan Nalmi.
The emergency boxes are currently covered with garbage bags, and some students avoid the path all together because they know that the emergency boxes do not work.
Nalmi says “I generally avoid that side of campus, especially in the evening time because like there is two wooded patches on both sides and around 6 or 7 o’clock there is nobody here.”
By the evening time the campus usually dies down and most students do not take the path from A building to L building. Student Ambassador for Humber Lakeshore Matt Allen says he does not recall the emergency call boxes working in the spring time as he took students and parents on campus tours.
Allen says “It’s kind of embarrassing when I’m doing tours, taking families and prospective students along and telling them about how safe our campus is with all these phones available except they’re not in use.”
There are alternatives in place to using the emergency boxes. In case something were to happen the area is under security surveillance and Humber security regularly patrol the area. Rob Kilfoyle says “there is a plan in place to get them running as soon as possible.”
