Campus safety at a glance
Emergency phones can be found at more than 100 locations around campus.
With campus safety emerging at the forefront of family’s criteria when choosing where to send their children to college, parents and students can take comfort in knowing that Texas A&M boasts one of the safest college campuses in the nation.
The safety Aggies enjoy is due to the number of services the university provides on campus. All Texas A&M students have at their disposal the Corps of Cadets Escort Service, an entire police department dedicated solely to A&M and numerous blue emergency telephone stations located throughout campus.
Regarded as the “Keepers of the Spirit” of Aggieland, one of the most important services of protection the Corps offers is the Cadet Escort
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Program. Students located on campus can call the escort service at
(979) 845-6789 — a phone number listed on the back of each student’s ID card — and give them their location and contact information. The Corps will then immediately dispatch a cadet from their guardroom to meet the student to walk them to their destination. The service is available from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. every day of the week.
In the event that a student is alone at night and feels in need of help, the emergency blue phones are at their disposal. There are 115 of these phones scattered throughout the campus, and are immediately recognizable by their 12-foot poles illuminated by a blue light and the words “Police Help” written around the booth. These emergency phone
systems immediately alert the
dispatcher to the student’s exact location. To operate these phones, a
person simply presses the red button and speaks directly into the speaker in the center of the phone.
The university also has its own police department, independent of the local municipal departments of College Station and Bryan. The University Police Department contains fully operational investigation, crime
prevention and training divisions, as well as its own Emergency Communications Center. The UPD has 139 authorized positions, including 70 state certified police officers, led by Police Chief Michael Ragan, Class of 1982 and graduate of the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. The UPD police office is located at 1111 Research
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Parkway, in Research Park, and is open 24 hours a day, seven days a
week. The department also posts alerts to their website, Facebook and
Twitter.
Another valuable safety capability comes from the county level. The entirety of Brazos County allows residents to text 9-1-1 in emergency situations that may not be conducive to phone calls. Local police departments and the Brazos County 9-1-1 District urge residents to only use this method as a last resort, however, since text messages do not allow location tracking. “Call if you can, text if you can’t,” is their motto. In situations where this is the case makes it impossible to make any noise, this feature can make all a difference.