TipNow still in trial stage

By Genna Tan

In a move to improve communication in the event of an emergency, Campus Safety will be implementing an anonymous texting system that allows anyone to send in tips about campus incidents.

"If someone has a tip about something that is happening, he or she can text scu@tipnow.org," said Charlie Arolla, director of Campus Safety.

He said the tipster would be given a random name or number to ensure anonymity in the process.

TipNow, a product developed by Silicon Valley-based Resiligence Inc., is a collection and management system for anonymous text tips.

TipNow can be used to report any type of information.

"It can be for criminal activity, safety hazard or even something like a bike obstructing the stairs," said Arolla. "It can be a variety of information that the person may want to pass on."

People can also text TipNow to clarify rumors, said Arolla.

Resiligence President and CEO Cyril Rayan said TipNow's text-based nature would encourage more students to use it.

"We thought about what campus environments were like, and that's why we made TipNow text-based," said Rayan.

Arolla said that was a reason it made sense to use TipNow.

"We're trying it out because texting seems to be very popular among college-aged individuals," said Arolla. "Sometimes it's easier for the person to text something than to pick up the phone."

The anonymity that TipNow offers is key, said Philip Beltran, assistant director of campus safety.

"In my experience at my last job at the police department, we got some very good information from the tip line, as long as it was anonymous," said Beltran. "TipNow is an extension of the anonymous tip lines that police departments have."

Hector Vega, a community facilitator in Sobrato, said the anonymity could help CFs resolve incidents, because students don't want to tell on their friends.

"We have situations where if students had contacted Campus Safety or their CFs earlier, the situation wouldn't have escalated as much as it did," said Vega. "The main reason why most of them didn't contact Campus Safety or their CFs earlier was because they were scared of the consequences of alerting Campus Safety and how their friends might see them after that."

According to Arolla, the implementation of TipNow at Santa Clara is still in its trial stages.

"We'll look at it for 90 days and see how successful it is by seeing how many people usually send in information," said Arolla.

The tips will go to the dispatch team from Campus Safety for immediate review and response, but Campus Safety is looking at getting the Residence Life and Housing offices involved, said Arolla.

"We are looking at Residence Life and Housing being another arm of TipNow, because there could be issues inside or around the dorm that the on-duty people can be alerted about," said Beltran.

The system would ideally tip the Residence Life staff, instead of Campus Safety receiving the tip and telling housing.

Rayan, a graduate of Santa Clara's MBA program, said the shooting at Virginia Tech that occurred in 2007 made him think about emergency prevention.

"The key benefit of TipNow is that it detects emergencies and possibly even prevents them," said Rayan.

Still, there is no guard against spamming yet, said Beltran.

"There will be people who might use it as text graffiti, but in the future, Resiligence is looking at a ranking system for tips so that we can prioritize the tips," said Beltran. "For instance, if a certain tipster frequently gives good tips, he or she would receive a higher rating than someone who texts us things like 'Campus Safety sucks.'"

Contact Genna Tan at (408) 554-4546 or gbtan@scu.edu.