Campus Safety and Asbury Student Congress collaborated on new parking stickers as an increased campus safety measure for the Fall 2022 semester.
“In the past, students, particularly female students, were concerned that the large student stickers not only were easily identifiable off campus, but also identified the location to which they would return, and for some students, class status was also indicated,” David Hay, Assistant Vice President of Campus Safety, told the Collegian.
These stickers, coupled with the small size of Asbury’s campus, could allow individuals to follow or find students’ vehicles with little effort. As of August 23, there have been no reports of individuals seeking out students’ vehicles this way, and Campus Safety intends for the new stickers to keep it that way. “The Campus Safety team reviewed practices regarding parking stickers and designed the 2022-2023 stickers to meet all internal needs while mitigating the opportunity for the stickers to be used by outside persons for nefarious purposes,” Hay said.
The new stickers are smaller, and provide no identifying information such as the university’s name or the student’s class status, although Asbury’s bell tower is present on the sticker’s design. Instead, each student’s parking sticker has an identification number which cannot be used to identify the student with external resources.
“I am not currently aware of any other institutions in higher education making a purposeful choice to limit the information available to external sources on their institutions’ parking stickers,” Hay said. “It appears colleges/ universities may be using their parking stickers for identification as well as for marketing purposes. In summary, we listened to student concerns voiced last year and found a way to address those concerns while maintaining the functionality of the parking sticker system.”
Hay also assured students that security is of utmost concern, and the Campus Safety team will continue to innovate ways to keep Asbury safe. “Campus Safety cares about [student] concerns, listens, and takes actionable steps whenever possible to address those concerns.”
