UNM advised to BUILD A WALL to make campus safer
The security consulting firm came back with a report suggesting that the college build a fence around the perimeter.
The University of New Mexico commissioned a study on how to make its campus safer.
The University of New Mexico, in an effort to make the campus safer, could soon build a wall around its perimeter.
UNM media relations officer Daniel Jiron confirmed to Campus Reform Monday that the university had commissioned a study to an outside security consulting firm that produced a report suggesting as one option to keep the campus safer the construction of a 10-foot wrought-iron fence. While it is nowhere near finalized, the university is considering all of its options.
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“UNM is continuously evaluating all possible solutions that improve safety for our campus community,” UNM President Garnett Stokes said in a statement, the Albuquerque Journal reported. “There are no imminent decisions about perimeter security and any strategy involves multiple things to consider before moving forward.”
The university commissioned the request for proposals in October. A report dated January 2019, a copy of which Campus Reform obtained, was conducted by the South Carolina-based Safeguards Consulting. In the 45-page report, the consulting firm states, “using barriers that physically define the campus perimeter and mitigate breaching or scaling is the proper design methodology for a secure perimeter...a wrought-iron fencing design of eight to ten feet in height with tightly spaced metal risers and stucco structural posts was used as the basis of the study.”
The proposed fencing’s height and the spacing would make the fence “difficult (but not impossible to scale,” the report states, adding that “natural surveillance” would be possible through the spacing of the posts. According to the Albuquerque Journal, whose reporting Jiron told Campus Reform is completely accurate, the university paid Safeguards Consulting $53,000 to complete the study. The newspaper reported that such a barrier around the campus would cost about $1.6 million.
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