UCA is in the process of taking out the iconic blue-light emergency phone poles, with technological advancements away from the landline technology on which they run being cited as the primary reason for their removal.

“The technology is completely outdated,” Sgt. Michael Hopper said. “[The technology is] used in landlines. The infrastructure is outdated. I’m not sure exactly when the majority of those poles were put in, but I started school out here in the mid-90s, and they were here, so it was the decision that was made that it was time to take those out.”

The phones were meant to be used in case of emergency on campus to immediately contact UCAPD with the push of a button. However, according to Hopper, UCAPD was only contacted nine times over the last three years through the blue poles, and none of those activities were emergency-related.

“We’re talking about things like somebody needing [to get into] a building, or they were locked out of their car, or something like that,” Hopper said. 

In addition to the technology being outdated and the phones not being used for emergencies, Hopper said the effort required to maintain the phones contributed to the decision to remove them. 

“The maintenance; the upkeep that we were needing to put into them, it was because the infrastructure is outdated,” Hopper said. “We were having a lot of maintenance problems with them. And so the amount of effort and time and money that were being put into those, I think it was just deemed that it was not quite justifiable to spend the money to keep those around.”

Hopper said the maintenance issues would become worse when it rained, which shifted officers’ attention away from actual potential emergencies.

“Every time it rains, we had certain phones that would ring constantly, over and over and over and over, water would get in the lines,” Hopper said. “So that takes our communication officers’ attention away from what they should be doing to now focusing on trying to answer that phone and trying to get that phone to stop ringing. Just overall, it was time to do something different.”

Although the physical poles across campus will be removed, it will still be possible to contact UCAPD through the Safe@UCA mobile app.

“That’s something that we push every year, every semester, it’s got a mobile blue light feature on there,” Hopper said. “So all you have to do is open that up in the mobile blue light and it will ring directly into our communication system. You know, most people have a phone on them at all times. And so that’s one of the ways that we’re looking at sort of compensating for the loss of the emergency phones.” 

Another feature on the app is a ‘Walk With Me’ feature. 

“You can activate that, and it will allow somebody on the other end to actually follow your little dot [location] on a map across campus. So it’s got some neat safety features on there. So that’s pretty much what we’re using as a replacement for those.” Hopper said.