One incident we will never forget is the tragedy that struck hundreds of university students and their families and friends when former RU student Billy McCaw was murdered here in New Brunswick. This incident is what spurred Richard Trent and his associates to create the Scarlet Zone initiative.

Trent, president of the student group Community Perspectives and a senior in the School of Arts and Sciences, said this act of violence was the initiative’s “real catalyst.” He explains Scarlet Zones to be “…the areas within New Brunswick, in the streets within New Brunswick, that have the greatest concentration of Rutgers students.” These Scarlet Zones “should be treated as these areas that the University should pay more attention to,” Trent says.

Trent continues, saying, “Right now the university does not distinguish between an off-campus student that is a commuter and say drives 30 minutes from northern New Jersey to come to school every day and someone who walks two minutes to College Ave every day and living here right in New Brunswick. So, while both student groups are very important, they have very different needs.” The labeling of Scarlet Zones would help the university to identify where off-but-on-campus students need protection and improved information distribution, Trent says.

On the initiative’s motivation, he elaborates, “We feel there are certain needs that the off-campus student population living right here in New Brunswick has that the university has an obligation to help with, particularly relating to safety and services related to emergency preparedness.” The “we” Trent uses refers to the organizations collaborating to make Scarlet Zones a reality, including members of Rutgers University Student Assembly and the Off-Campus Students’ Association.

Concerns regarding the safety of off-campus students expand from the more immediate threat of criminal activity to the unpredictable effects of natural disasters. Trent goes on to cite the informational complications resulting from Hurricane Sandy in 2012, explaining by personal anecdote: “…there was a lot of miscommunication to off-campus students where they were not fully informed, and, for example, there was a water boil advisory in the greater New Brunswick area and off-campus students were not aware of this… I know of cases where people were still drinking the water and weren’t aware that they weren’t supposed to.” If successfully pitched to the university administration, Scarlet Zones can help prevent these communicative breakdowns.

Trent is excited about the newly established Fifth and Sixth Ward NBPD and RUPD joint patrols. “We think this is a great idea, this is exactly the kind of thing we want to see. But we want to know, are they targeting to the right areas? Because if they’re doing this extra patrolling in areas that aren’t where Rutgers students are living, or maybe they’re missing a really dense concentration of students in another area, then we want to help inform these policies [for] the university so they can be as effective as possible.”

For the most efficacious Scarlet Zone proposition they can muster, Trent and his fellow student associates will be canvassing the streets of New Brunswick surveying off-but-on campus students about “how satisfied they are with their residence, how satisfied they are with their landlord, how safe they feel in their neighborhood and at their residence, if they’re aware of any services that are provided to them by the university currently, [and] questions related to what kind of services they would like to see offered to off-campus students.” The answers to those questions, Trent hopes, will help inform the group’s demarcation of Scarlet Zones.

The creation of Scarlet Zones is a great idea, and most students know that the greater New Brunswick area could use some extra security. The accuracy and volume of the data depend upon off-but-on campus students opening their doors when the initiative’s volunteers come knocking. The more data collected, the more accurately high concentrations of off-but-on campus students will be identified, and the better these Scarlet Zones, if approved, aim to make us safer and to mollify our overly concerned mothers.