Safety and security on campus should not only be known and taught to every single person but it should also be just common sense.

There are flyers posted up all around from the Division of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management informing us with community safety tips such as avoid walking alone, use NIU escort or late-night ride service, and avoid isolated areas. These flyers also include safety tips for home; for example, if someone is ringing your doorbell, do not open the door until you see who it is and keep your door locked at all times. And obviously, in the middle of the night, you will not find me walking alone or taking shortcuts that I am not familiar with.

These tips are very helpful but this should come to us adults as common sense. We are all 18 years old and above and we still do not know that we should not lock our doors? These tips are pretty repetitive and I have been hearing some of these since junior high.

It really irks me when I see a girl or a guy walking home at night alone. Has anything in the recent news taught you anything? You are not invincible. Get some friends and walk in a group or make use of Late Night Ride. But since Late Night Ride is not always reliable, your friends will always be.

We need to keep up the safety precautions and have safe actions to prevent anyone from being harmed. The pamphlet, “Safety and Security on Campus,” I picked up in the Campus Life Building is actually useful. This seems like it is targeted towards new students and visitors but it has any safety fact you need at NIU.

But really, some of it should be kind of obvious. What do you think a tall black box that is labeled “Emergency” does? Transform into Optimus Prime?

Speaking seriously, it does give statistics of the number of certain crimes that has occurred on our campus, and there are numbers for the tip-line or other important numbers that we might not know where to look.

Freshman communications major Steven Libert says, “These safety tips are good for the student body, but I feel like some of the tips are repetitive and facts we should already know as college students.”

So if you are looking for a place for in-depth security information, take a visit to the Campus Life Building. They are located in the right in the main lobby.

Security tips are helpful, but in reality, it’s really just common sense.