In a recent poll on PDBY’s Instagram, 84% of students responded by saying that they do not feel safe walking around Hatfield at night.
While 89% of respondents said they have not experienced theft in or around campus, 70% said they feel safe on campus during the day. The sharp decline in perceived safety after dark raises a broader question: where does university protection end, and where does personal responsibility begin?
Security visibility on campus is constant. Access gates require student cards or identification, patrols operate across academic and residential spaces, and the 24-hour Operational Management Centre handles incidents and lost property. A security personnel member who asked to remain anonymous said that officers do their best to keep and make students feel safe on and around campus, adding that access control systems are designed to prevent unauthorised entry.
He explained that students who feel unsafe inside campus should immediately approach any visible security officer. At the same time, he emphasised that not every incident reflects a failure of campus protection. Using the example of a phone left unattended on the Aula grass, he noted that students must also take responsibility for the safeguarding of their belongings.
University guidance reinforces this shared responsibility model. Students are advised to keep their student cards secure and to avoid exposing barcodes or student numbers when posting images on social media. If a student card falls into the wrong hands, it can be misused for access purposes. Similarly, students are advised not to share their clickUP or UP login details with others. Providing login information, including for someone else to complete academic work on a student’s behalf, violates university protocols and academic integrity rules.
While campus protection services regulate physical entry and respond to incidents, digital access and personal data protection remain largely within the student’s control. The security framework can monitor gates and patrol spaces, but it cannot prevent passwords from being shared or personal information from being publicly exposed.
Lost property procedures are centralised and standardised across all campuses. Enquiries regarding missing items must be made at the 24-hour Operational Management Centre of the Department of Security Services, and all found property should be handed in there. Security officials have urged students who find belongings not to keep them, noting that doing so can significantly impact another student’s sense of safety and stability on campus. The poll results suggest that experiences of safety are not uniform. Although the majority reported no direct theft experience, perceptions of vulnerability increase significantly at night, particularly in surrounding areas such as Hatfield.
The issue is therefore not the absence of security systems; it is the understanding of their limits. Institutional protection provides structure: controlled access, visible patrols, and response mechanisms. Individual decisions, where students walk, what they leave unattended, how they manage identification, and whether they protect their digital credentials also shape outcomes. Safety at UP operates on two levels: the university provides protection systems, and students are expected to use them responsibly.
As campus life continues both day and night, the balance between these two roles becomes clearer: security creates the framework, but everyday choices determine how secure that framework remains.
