By: Muriel Almeida/Staff Writer
Student Government Association’s Senator at large, Dominique ‘Rose’ Ingraham, sparked an initiative for lighting up the campus at Florida International University’s Modesto Maidique campus.
This idea first came up when she was taking a late class and was walking to her dorm room alone at night.
“That was an issue for me, and I knew that it was probably going to be an issue for other people,” Ingraham said.
She then took her initiative to SGA and spoke with them about how it would specifically target the lighting issue on campus based on the information she gathered from the student body through word of mouth, even though similar initiatives have been presented in the past.
A council resolution was passed and enacted, stating the importance of lighting walkways that connect major buildings within 50 feet from each other.
It also stated how students who walk through these dark zones could potentially be self-injured, due to fallen debris or tripping on uneven concrete, and also implied the 24-hour facilities FIU-MMC offers, like the Green Library and the CASE building computer lab, which are incentives for students to be roaming around campus at any time at night or several times a week.
Ingraham will meet with the Department of Operations and Safety to talk about her resolution about lighting the campus and figure out a plan for the project.
“I’ve been trying to [meet] with FIU Police to be able to sit down and chat about statistics about people being attacked at night or what they currently do on campus,” she said.
Ingraham hopes to include more work on campus safety such as partnering with FIU Police by adding more blue emergency call boxes so that they’re easily accessible throughout campus.
There are still no talks about financing this project or how much it will cost to continue forward with this resolution. There will also be a talk about what role SGA can have so that it can cover that cost if there were to be a funding issue, according to Ingraham.
Lighting Up Campus Kickoff will be hosted by Ingraham herself along with SGA and Administration on Monday, Mar. 2.
This event will give students an opportunity to personally mark the dark spots on a poster of the MMC campus map.
“That’s going to help aid in conversations that I have with the department and FIUPD by being able to visually show them where students have identified that need more lighting,” she said.
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