Top of page

June 10 Weekly Message: Safety

Bottom Line, Up Front

  • Upcoming key dates or action items for families 
  • Safety and WFU Police – general information
  • Talk to your students about safety topics
  • How families can sign up for Campus Security Alerts
  • Don’t forget Cybersecurity! Top 5 Cyber-Secure Practices for students
  • Safety tasks for your students
  • After Hours Help

Dear parents and families of incoming students,

It’s a brand new week, and time for our Weekly Update for new. This week, we are going to focus on issues of safety. But before we get there, we want to draw your attention to the following upcoming key dates and action items.

Upcoming key dates or action items for families

Here’s what you should know this week.

  • Family due dates:
    • If you and your student have not yet registered to attend our June 24 Virtual New Student Reception, please do so asap. (We will record it and post it afterwards if you cannot attend live).
    • Put a reminder in your calendar for Family Weekend registration, which will open on July 8. Family Weekend is scheduled for September 26-28.
      • If you have not already done so, buy your tickets for the Family Weekend football game(Sept. 27 against GA Tech).
        • NOTE: Students can get a free ticket to sit in the students’ football section with the Screamin’ Demon Rewards App (ticket claims open at noon the Monday before the game: Sept. 22 at noon ET). If your student wants to sit with you, you will need to purchase a ticket for your student.
  • Upcoming housing webinar (optional but recommended): Beginning Your Journey in The Forest: Housing for New Students – June 12th at noon EDT via Zoom webinar: Incoming first-year students and their families are invited to learn more about our housing process and have a chance to ask questions! Transfer students will receive more information about their housing selection process in mid-June. The webinar will be recorded and posted after the event for families/students unable to attend live. NOTE: the Zoom link will be accessible on June 12.

Safety and WFU Police – general information

  • Nothing is more important than the safety of our students and our campus. We have a Wake Forest University Police Department, which is comprised of professionally trained police officers, security officers, communications officers, and support staff. The primary role of the WFUPD is to protect and assist the campus community:
    • Wake Forest has a variety of methods to alert students in case of an emergency situation, including email, text, voicemail, indoor and outdoor alerts, and more.
    • Emergency call boxes [Map / PDF] are located throughout the campus. Push the button once to speak with a dispatcher. Telephone boxes are also located near some building entrances. Pick up the receiver, no dialing required. Tell the dispatcher about the suspicious activity or person, giving details about what you saw, the exact location and why it is suspicious.
    • We have Security Officers placed in various campus buildings. We also have Wake Forest University Police officers assigned as resource officers to individual residence halls and academic buildings, serving as liaison officers to students, faculty, and staff in those buildings. Off-duty Winston-Salem Police Officers conduct patrols on the perimeter of our campus.
    • At the start of each year, our Chief of Police sends out a campus safety reminder with tips on security resources.

Talk to your students about safety topics

  • While Wake Forest takes many measures to promote safety, it is up to each of us to do our part to ensure safety too. We live in a small city, and Winston-Salem – like every other town or city – is not immune to crime. The unfortunate reality is that no amount of preparation or planning can make our campus and the surrounding area totally crime-proof.  Families, you can help us by talking to your students about safety:
    • Encourage your students to download the WakeSafe app and use it. With Wake Safe, you can use your cell phone as a personal security device that allows direct access to police, 911 emergency services, emergency location sharing, social escape (i.e., it allows students to get out of a tough social situation by calling their phone and giving them an excuse to leave), and a peer-to-peer Friend Walk tool (i.e., it sends your student’s location in real-time to a friend so they can watch as your student walks to their destination! They’ll watch your student and can trigger a call to emergency services if necessary)
    • Talk to your student about personal safety and crime prevention strategies. University Police has tips for students. Review these with your student and talk about the importance of situational awareness, the buddy system, and your behavioral expectations for them – in other words, if you would not want them walking alone on campus at 3 a.m., talk about that now before college starts.
    • Make sure your student knows if a crime happens, they should call 911 and report it to the police. We need to have students go to the police first if something is happening so the police can be aware of it and act as needed. Sometimes students’ first reaction is to call their family or text their friends/post on social media; those things should be done after they contact the police.
    • Reinforce the idea that students should seek their safety information from the University or official local sources, and not social media (particularly anonymous sites like Fizz), which can be inaccurate.
    • It’s also important to note that jurisdiction for off campus violations is the purview of city police, not our campus police.
      • So if a student is an underage guest and gets cited for drinking underage at an off-campus party, they will have a city police problem AND a WFU Student Conduct problem. That is not a phone call you want to receive the weekend after you drop off your student for Orientation (“Hi, Dad. I got cited for underage possession by Winston-Salem police and I might need a lawyer…” (I have had former students who had to make that call. Not fun.)

How families can sign up for Campus Security Alerts

  • Campus Safety Alerts are not sent to families via email; families must download the WakeSafe app to receive alerts:
    • Search for and download the WakeSafe app on your mobile device in the app store.
    • You will see a popup asking you to Allow Notifications. Tap Allow.
An image of the Wake Safe screen asking if you will allow them to send notifications (note: you must choose Allow)

Once you have downloaded WakeSafe and enabled notifications, If a campus alert is issued, you will receive a notice on your mobile device.

  • How to verify you are correctly set up to receive alerts on your mobile phone:
    • In your Settings, go to WakeSafe and ensure that you have selected Allow Notifications (we encourage you to select Immediate notifications and to allow both Sounds and Badges).

Don’t Forget Cybersecurity! Here are our Top Five Cyber-Secure Practices to Reinforce with Your Students

  1. Boost your Google account security: Run a personalized security “check-up” on all your Google accounts.
  2. Protect against malware: Install and consistently run antivirus software 
  3. Enhance account security: Use passkeys whenever available for quick, phishing-resistant protection of your WFU and other accounts.
  4. Safeguard social media information: Avoid sharing personal details that could be used by hackers to answer security questions. Hackers often find answers in public digital profiles and photos.
  5. Refer to the full cybersecurity checklist for more personalized tips 

For more cybersecurity tips, visit is.wfu.edu/infosec. Report any suspicious emails or threats to infosec@wfu.edu. Upon arrival on campus, connect to WFU’s most secure wireless network, eduroam.

Safety tasks for your students

  • Your students will be assigned some online Orientation courses in July.
  • These courses are meant to help them understand some common safety issues, including:
    • Bystander Intervention Practice
    • Alcohol Harm Reduction 
    • Resilience and Mental Health 
    • Interpersonal Violence Prevention
    • Sexual Health
    • Hazing Prevention  
  • These online courses should be completed by your students by August 29.
  • There are also some additional safety tasks assigned to students(due August 16).
    • Register your mobile phone with Wake Ready. NOTE: Undergraduate students are required to provide their cell phone number. The process for students to update their cellphone number is here. Your student’s cell/mobile number must be in the “Cell (Mobile)” record field.
    • Download the WakeSafe app (strongly recommended).
    • Download Alertus, a tool that allows University Police to send a pop-up, full-screen laptop warning when immediate safety actions are needed. In the event of an emergency while they are in class and their cellphones are off/silenced, Alertus would allow a message to be seen on their laptop screen.
    • Register your property with University Police
  • Please do all you can to encourage your students to download the WakeSafe app and Alertus. Those tools can be incredibly useful in an emergency – but your students have to take action to download them.

After Hours Help

  • Most offices work on a Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. schedule. If you have an urgent need to reach someone at the University because you have a concern that must be addressed quickly during a time that our offices are not open, use the following resources:
    • Emergency Response (24/7, year round) – University Police – 336.758.5911 for the kinds of emergencies where you would normally call 911 (e.g., immediate life and safety concerns).
    • Non-Emergency Response – 336-758-CARE (2273) is a service that ensures someone will always be available (i.e., 24/7 M-F, weekends and university holidays) to provide caring and thoughtful consultation services for Wake Forest students in need of mental health assistance or support.
    • Other Resources

Note that if you contact an office after hours/on the weekend about a non-urgent situation (i.e., something that does not involve immediate life, health, or safety concerns), administrators will respond to you the next business day (or as they are available). 

Parting thoughts

Your next message will come next Tuesday. In case you missed one of our weekly messages to families, they are all archived here.

With best wishes,

Betsy Chapman, Ph.D. (‘92, MA ‘94)
Executive Director of Family Communications

Recent Posts

Archives