Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo campus Foot Patrol celebrated 25 years of service this past Wed, Nov. 15, 2017.
Foot Patrol celebrated their milestone by handing out cake and cupcakes to students in the Fred Nichols Centre concourse. The booth set up also provided activities to students who wanted to participate.
“We’re celebrating 25 years of service. It is a huge milestone for us and really, for our event in the concourse, we are mainly trying to promote our service to get people to become aware of us and hopefully use [our service] a little more,” Stephen Chung, internal promotions executive for Foot Patrol said.
“Foot Patrol is really important because it’s one of our essential services the Students’ Union provides to ensure that students get a safe walk home or are able to access the van service. [Foot Patrol] is just really important to ensure student safety on campus,” Tomizza said.
“If anything, [we hope the event] just brings everyone out to have a good time and enjoy some free food, and to clear up some misconceptions about our service that have been going around over the year,” Chung said.
During the event, Foot Patrol emphasized and clarified information regarding various services which students may be confused about.
“One of the misconceptions is that our van program acts as a taxi service, which is not true,” Chung said.
“We serve people that live more than 2 km away from campus and we only operate [our van] from 11pm to 3:00 am and its only within those hours that we offer that van service it’s for people who live far away from campus,” Chung said.
In addition to this foot patrol also wanted to explain that there have been misconceptions about their operating hours and who is on shift during these foot patrol services.
“Some misconceptions are [related to] operating hours and also some of the information about our volunteers. While safety is a huge thing that we are committed to, some professors and school services are saying that all of our volunteers are first-aid trained [and] that is not true,” Chung said.
“We do have first-aid personnel on shift every night, but it’s not necessarily true that all personnel are first-aid trained.”
A safe walk home service has been emphasized throughout their branding on campus and in social media. However, Chung explains that the community feel is important when it comes to delivering this service to students.
“The importance of Foot Patrol is really just to get everyone home safe and to have everyone feel like there’s a community feel, in order to feel like they are not alone at the end of the day, and that if they need help or anything we are always within reach,” Chung said.
“We work with Students’ Union in order to promote the Foot Patrol service and safety in general.”
Anthony Tomizza, vice president of programming and services for the Students’ Union, explains the importance of Foot patrol as a safe alternative to walking home alone.
“Foot Patrol is really important because it’s one of our essential services the Students’ Union provides to ensure that students get a safe walk home or are able to access the van service. [Foot Patrol] is just really important to ensure student safety on campus,” Tomizza said.
Tomizza explained that, although Foot Patrol isn’t making any changes to its service anytime soon, they are open to feedback about Foot Patrol and how to improve their service.
“Were always looking to improve our service whether that is training volunteers differently or ensure that were able to meet the [demand] of students looking to access the service, were really just looking to continue having that great volunteer culture that we’ve always had,” Tomizza said.
“[The Students’ Union] is really excited that we are able to celebrate the 25 years and look[s] forward to [Foot Patrol continuing] to be a strong committee on campus.”