Officials at the University of New Mexico (UNM) have proposed putting up a fence around its campus for better security.
Students and staff agree that safety is a problem and it is entirely too easy to get onto campus, reports KRQE.
They said people come up to them asking for money, acting strange and the problem is worse at night.
“I definitely don’t come onto campus at night because you hear really horrible things happen to students at night,” says student Alanie Rael.
UNM officials said these concerns have been brought up by parents as well, who are worried about the homeless on campus.
According to the university, a South Carolina security firm was hired to conduct the Main Campus Perimeter Security Access Study. It recommended UNM build an eight to 10-foot iron fence to wrap around the entire campus. The job is estimated to cost $1.6 million.
With the fence, students, staff and visitors would access the campus through one of 25 entrances and exits that would be controlled by card readers, turnstiles or swinging gates.
One student, Martina Gallegos, believes the fence “would be a good idea, there are a lot of issues on campus. We get texts all the time from possible threats coming in and out of our school.”
Others, like Rael, think “a fence would mess up the dynamic that the UNM community and the Albuquerque community have as a whole.”
At the moment, it remains unknown if UNM will move forward with the fence proposition.
In the meantime, UNM has partially cut off public access and last summer, card readers were installed in some of the buildings on campus.
