USC promotes safe travel to and from campus with ‘Safety Day’

Wednesday marked USC’s “Safety Day,” an on-campus event designed to promote methods of safe and accessible transportation.

The event took place at McCarthy Quad alongside the farmers’ market, with the main aim of providing students with knowledge about “how exactly we can be more efficient on this campus, how we can be more safe and what we can do to change the current procedures and protocols,” said Justin Santana, a spokesperson for USC Transportation.

The event was sponsored by USC Transportation, USC Department of Public Safety, Fire Safety & Emergency Planning, Environmental Health & Safety, LA Bike Coalition, Bird Scooters and Lime Bikes, who also had booths set up at the event.

The goal of the day was to “make students aware of the many different programs that are out there for them,” said Santana, “especially for students that have issues with private transportation” because of rising costs.

The event was held in a booth as part of the campus farmers’ market. Officials gave out safety gear such as bike bells and provided safety demonstrations and information. Pamphlets were also provided about the free USC U-pass, which can be used for unlimited rides on all metro bus and rail lines, Culver CityBus, Foothill Transit, GTrans, LADOT-DASH, Torrance transit, long beach transit, Montebello bus lines, Norwalk transit, Pasadena transit and Santa Monica big blue bus. Maps were also available for students to find accessible routes to various places in Los Angeles.

Emergency Response team member, Emmelina Najera, from the Fire Safety and Emergency Planning Committee, said her team was using the event as an opportunity to talk about other types of emergencies that occur on campus. They aimed to spread awareness about what to do in the event of an earthquake and to remind everyone to evacuate in the event of a drill. They also performed safety demonstrations on how to use a fire extinguisher.

Andrea Sanchez, from the Office of Environmental Health and Safety, said her team was promoting information on topics like heat illness.

“Los Angeles [has] really high heat temperatures, like 90-100 degrees,” Sanchez said. “We want to make sure that we’re giving information on how to prevent heat exhaustion or heat strokes.”

They were also giving out PPE kits that included masks and hand sanitizer due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases on campus to ensure students and faculty at USC have something on hand.

The booths were surrounded by bikes in an effort to ensure students were aware they could register their bikes at the event. Santana said the most important safe riding tip for students would be to register their transportation vehicles with public safety.

Santana said the event would be beneficial to students who had questions for them about transportation since it is usually “hard for them to communicate with us, especially during our office hours.”

Students appeared to enjoy and benefit from the event. Armine Nahigian said she “won a bike at the DPS raffle before” and that she enjoyed talking to DPS about what she has seen going on around campus.

She also said that she could see how USC might not be safe for students and riders if they do not pay attention.

Lilian Hou said she herself has almost been a part of a few accidents on campus and that she thinks “people got to pay more attention.”

Santana advises USC students to “look at some of the opportunities and options we have on this campus that will benefit you generally.”

“I feel that with safety [day] we are providing the knowledge; how exactly we can be more efficient in this campus, how we can be more safe and what we can do to change the current procedures and protocols.”