Safety Survey

University Safety Survey

In spring 2024, the Office of Public Safety and University Initiatives and Policy administered the first University Safety Survey, gathering invaluable feedback and ideas from thousands of students, faculty and staff. Based on the survey findings, the Office of Public Safety and partners across the university prioritized and implemented safety initiatives and programs to create a safer campus environment for all. You will find on this page a progress summary as of April 2025.

Progress Highlights

Perceptions of Safety

Understanding your perceptions of safety on campus is essential to tackling the root of concerns and improving resources and infrastructure. Priorities, based on survey responses and work already underway, include improving lighting, security camera coverage, and securing access to non-public facing buildings.

Action:

Facilities Management is using survey data to prioritize lighting improvements, particularly in parking garages, underpasses, and high-traffic areas.

FM and Parking and Transportation are collaborating on a campus-wide lighting assessment, expanding several blocks outside of the campus perimeter. As a basis for their work, the on-the-ground assessment team is using the data-informed heat map of key locations where respondents feel less safe. 

Supporting data:

About two-thirds (65%) of survey respondents said improving lighting in garages should be a priority, and a similar share (61%) said the same about lighting on sidewalks. 

Among those who said there is somewhere on campus where they do not feel safe, about half (49%) attributed this feeling to a lack of lighting in the area. 

Expanded Ongoing

Action:

Funding has been requested for additional cameras, with an emphasis on placement in parking garages and highly trafficked areas. Additionally, OPS is performing an analysis of existing camera placement and positioning to improve functionality. 

Supporting data:

Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents reported feeling safer with cameras in and around campus buildings.

Expanded Ongoing

Action:

Continued expansion of secured building entrances means all major buildings will have electronic controlled access (CatCard capable) by July 1, 2025, increasing security while maintaining accessibility.

A campus-wide building security assessment was completed in February 2025 to inform requests for building security enhancements throughout 2025-26.

Supporting data:

About three-quarters (74%) of survey respondents said restricted (i.e., CatCard) access to campus buildings made them feel more safe. 

Expanded Ongoing

Safety Programs

Confirming our community's needs and level of engagement with safety personnel was helpful to reaffirm work underway and inform ongoing and future safety programs. Priorities include expanding mental health support and sexual violence awareness, and building engagement with safety officers.

Action:

Launched in 2025 as a partnership between Counseling & Psych Services and UAPD, the U of A Crisis Mobile Team provides mental health crisis response, with trained mental health professionals available to assist students in need, sometimes alongside UAPD officers. 

Supporting data:

More than eight-in-ten survey respondents say mental health support should be a high priority, and 84% of respondents were supportive or very supportive of the co-responder CMT model.

Launched

Action:

Counseling & Psych Services has expanded direct education and outreach efforts with Greek Life and Athletics, improved Survivor Support Services, and increased support group offerings.

Supporting data:

73% of survey respondents said expanded sexual assault awareness and prevention programming should be a high priority. 

Expanded Ongoing

Action:

The rebranded UAPD Community Service Officer role launched in 2025. CSOs, previously known as Safety Aides, are non-sworn full-time employees (wearing gray shirts) and part-time student employees (wearing red shirts) who assist in various community-focused tasks that don’t require the full authority or training of a police officer, but still contribute to public safety and community engagement. The rebrand, including new uniforms with "Community Service Officer - Police" patches and embroidered CSO badges, serves to heighten the visibility of these UAPD employees, clearly marking them as part of the university’s dedicated law enforcement team.

Supporting data:

Just over half of respondents said the presence of campus security officers (54%) and police officers (53%) make them feel more safe, and 41% said increasing the number of campus security officers should be a high priority. Among those who told us there are specific places on campus where they do not feel safe, 33% attributed this feeling to a lack of police presence. 

Launched

Education and Communication

Seeing the high percentage of both students and employees eager to empower themselves through training is encouraging as we focus on education and communication. Priority projects included improving the UAlert process and language, launching new trainings, and an emphasis on evaluating and growing outreach channels.

Action:

System improvements now include mapped locations, clearer messaging, and streamlined UAPD response actions. As of April 2024, OPS is evaluating the UAlert notification system and exploring, through a formal Request for Proposal process, the possibility of integrating UAlert and the functions of the LiveSafe app through a single application.

Supporting data:

The majority of respondents found UAlert to be an effective form of communication for safety notifications. 

Following each UAlert instance, we incorporate feedback and continue to work toward clearer and more efficient messaging.

Ongoing

Action:

Two new Threat Assessment and Management Team trainings were launched in EDGE Learning to help our community learn more about handling concerning or threatening behaviors.

Spotting Trouble: Understanding Targeted Violence (45 min.)

  • Learn to understand targeted violence and identify the warning signs. Get an overview of TAMT and learn how and when to report concerns.

From Conflict to Collaboration: Building Peaceful Relationships (30 min.)

  • Learn to recognize problematic behavior and develop conflict resolution and de-escalation skills for challenging interpersonal situations.

In-person training, customizable by department or group, is now available by request. A prerequisite is completing the two online trainings.

Supporting data:

75% of all respondents expressed interest in further training around handling concerning or threatening behaviors.

Launched

Action:

OPS is expanding safety content targeted toward students on social media, improving emergency communication clarity, and developing new engagement and awareness strategies for fall 2025. UAPD is hiring a Community Engagement and Crime Prevention Specialist who will support student engagement and content starting in fall 2025.

Supporting data:

Survey results suggest that students would benefit from increased engagement on safety-focused content. Student respondents expressed an interest in receiving more safety-related content from the university via various channels: half or more agreed they would like more safety information via Instagram (50%) and the Office of Public Safety website (59%). 

Ongoing

Looking Forward

OPS remains committed to growing, evaluating and refining our outreach and initiatives each year, including Safety Strolls, Wildcats Take Care Safety Fair, UAPD Community Academy, and Wildcats Roar Against Sexual Violence 5K and Resource Fair. The Campus Safety Commission continues to provide valuable input on policies and programs.

Priorities for the coming year include:

  • Developing additional trainings, especially related to drills and evacuations. OPS hired an emergency management director in January 2025 to oversee this process. Let us know if you have feedback or ideas for safety trainings.
  • Launching an online safety awareness series specifically for students.
  • Enhancing UAPD crime data reporting and mapping technology for the public.
  • Partnering with campus groups to schedule and design Safety Strolls for specific audiences. If your class, team or department is interested in partnering with OPS to create a Safety Stroll, contact us. You can help inform this effort.
  • Continued improvements to UAlert functionality.

OPS will continue to seek input from the university community and implement safety improvements.

tips_and_updates

Do you have an idea or suggestion to help inform our priorities? Your voice matters. 

OPS always welcomes feedback at publicsafety@arizona.edu. 

Survey Background

 

Read the complete 2024 report

The Office of Public Safety (OPS) and University Initiatives & Policy (UIP) collaborated in spring 2024 to administer a University Safety Survey. The objective of the survey was to better understand the experiences of students, faculty, and staff related to campus safety and security at the University of Arizona.

The survey explores a wide range of topics including respondents’ sense of safety on campus, views of safety-related communications, interest in learning more about recent safety enhancements, and input on future safety initiatives. Survey results are being used to guide institutional changes and initiatives aimed at improving campus safety.

The safety survey was administered from March 27 - April 15, 2024 and sent to all faculty, staff, students, and Designated Campus Colleagues (DCCs). In total, 3,076 responses were collected, representing about 4.5% of students, staff, and faculty. Individual responses are considered confidential. However, aggregate data has been analyzed in order to identify trends and make data-informed recommendations.

Goal 1: Identify campus safety strengths and opportunities for improvement.

Goal 2: Better understand the community’s feeling of physical safety and awareness levels of available resources. 

Goal 3: Use results to make data-informed decisions that will continually improve campus safety. 

Goal 4: Collect longitudinal data through regular administration of the survey that will allow the University to identify trends and track progress over time. 

 

The findings from the 2024 survey provide current data about perceptions of safety as well as a baseline for future assessments. Some key findings explored in this report include the following:

  • When asked if there is a specific place on or near main campus where respondents do not feel safe, 59% of respondents said no. However, there are important differences in feelings of safety by role and among key demographics including gender identity, sexual identity, and race and ethnicity.
  • When asked to identify a location on a campus map where respondents feel the least safe, many identified parking garages, buildings with broad public access, and busy streets or intersections at the edges of campus. The coordinates from these data are being used to inform physical security upgrades. 
  • Most respondents indicated that physical security improvements implemented by OPS, including classroom door locks, security cameras, and restricted access to buildings (CatCard access), make them feel safer on campus. 
  • Respondents expressed overwhelming support for the expansion of mental health services for students and employees. Increasing sexual assault awareness and prevention programming was also a top priority identified in the survey results. 
  • Most respondents stated they would contact UAPD in an emergency. However, there are subtle but important differences in the likelihood of contacting UAPD by role and among key demographics including gender identity and race and ethnicity. 
  • Most respondents agree or strongly agree that emergency information is readily available. At the same time, there is wide variation in the awareness and perceived effectiveness of various communication channels used during emergencies.   
  • A majority of respondents are in favor of more safety training and drills, particularly students who may be more accustomed to such training based on their K-12 schooling experiences. 

FAQ

Survey results are being used to gain a deeper understanding of the university community’s feeling of physical safety and awareness levels. In particular, data-informed insights are guiding institutional initiatives aimed at improving safety. In addition to sharing a summary report of institution-wide data, the Office of Public Safety may create more detailed reports to better understand specific issues and experiences. All reports will be in the aggregate, using de-identified data.

The survey contained many general safety topics that are applicable to any University of Arizona location. It also contained specific questions related to Main Campus and Health Sciences campus. In future years, the survey may also include more specific questions for additional locations such as Phoenix Bioscience Core. Respondents were welcome to add specific concerns/recommendations in the open-ended response field at the end of the survey.
 

Yes, responses to the survey will remain confidential. Individual responses are not available to anyone other than the data analyst administering the survey. For analysis purposes, institutional data (e.g., college or division, demographics) will be included but all individually identifiable information has been excluded from the dataset. De-identified data, in the form of aggregate reports, will be shared with the university community, including senior leadership, in order to strengthen campus safety. Results for subgroups of respondents smaller than 10 people are not reported in order to maintain confidentiality.

All personally identifiable information is stored in secure systems and will only be used in ways that adhere to the university’s stringent privacy and security policies. Visit the university’s Privacy website to learn more.

The 2024 University Safety Survey was sent to all University of Arizona students, faculty, staff and designated campus colleagues. To take the survey, participants logged in using NetID.