A-State improving campus safety with improved lighting, additional cameras

JONESBORO, Ark. (KAIT) - Arkansas State University is shining a new light on campus safety.

According to a Friday news release, the university has entered the final phases of its four-year $2.6 million project to install enhanced lighting and additional security cameras.

“Modernizing our campus lighting not only improves visibility and safety, the new LED lights will provide utility and maintenance savings as well,” Executive Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration and Chief Operating Officer Len Frey said.

Despite supply chain issues and pandemic slowdowns, Frey said A-State was “moving full speed ahead” to complete the project by the end of this academic year.

“The safety of all the people on campus who walk or roll between living areas and classes has always been important at A-State,” Frey said.

During the project’s first phase, workers installed new lighting along Aggie Road on the east side of campus and along University Loop near North Park Quads.

Phase two added lights to Aggie Road on the west side of campus and parts of the Marion Berry Parkway.

In the recently completed third phase, lights were installed near Kays and University Halls.

These are first-year student residence halls. Bill Smith, Chief Communications Officer, said this area was important to make brighter.

“It’s put lights into our key parking areas near our first-year students’ residence areas as well as along Marion Berry Parkway away from the bridge where there had not been good light previously,” said Smith.

By the time the A-State Red Wolves take the field at its next home game, lighting for the parking lot west of Centennial Bank Stadium will be activated, completing the fourth phase.

The fifth phase, according to A-State, is bid and designed for construction near the Equine Center. Work will commence once contracts are approved.

The final phase will add new lighting along Dean Street and the Reng Student Union. Installation is expected to be completed in May 2023.

“I’m very pleased to see these safety projects moving ahead, especially with what we have seen in the news recently,” Chancellor Todd Shields said. “That A-State has been working on this for the past two years shows the commitment to thinking ahead and not reacting.”

Smith added that more security cameras will also be added to various areas on campus.

“And I wouldn’t be remiss if I didn’t mention we are also adding a large number of additional cameras. So, it’s not just that we are putting lights on these parking lots,” he said. “We are getting cameras installed in many of them, we are getting cameras in the entrances.”

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