As students travel through campus, they may notice large black boxes in various locations, with blue lights sitting on top. Be warned, these are for emergencies only.

“There are 88 [emergency] boxes total on campus, 44 of them in the parking structure and about four of them in DuSable alone,” said Sgt. Alan Smith of the University Police Department said.

Megan Graf, sophomore elementary education major and transfer student new to NIU, said she feels safer with them around.

“They make me feel safer while walking back at night by myself,” Graf said. “I went to a different school last year and I did not see them as much as NIU has here.”

The boxes do not go unchecked; the police officers test all of them out to make sure they are working properly.

“We currently test the boxes weekly,” Smith said. “We do not have any reported as broken right now.”

As far as if the department has any plans on adding to the 88 boxes, Smith said they are always looking.

“We are looking at a company right now with bigger and better boxes,” he said. “We always look to see what we can improve with better technology.”

The response time for the boxes is made in a timely manner.

“Whenever they go off, we’re there within a few minutes,” Smith said.

The fast response time of the emergency boxes made junior English major James Diedrich feel safer throughout his years at NIU.

“I’ve been here for three years now and I feel they are pretty effective from what I have heard,” Diedrich said.

A lot of NIU students press the button as they are walking as a joke of some sort, Smith said.

“We get a lot of them as a joke. As far as an emergency situation we haven’t, to the best of my knowledge, got those,” Smith said, “We urge people to not use them as jokes, because it is just like 911; you call and we send someone out there.”