Lighting on campus is examined during the annual lighting tour to keep campus safe at night. Photo by Jennifer Friese/The Dakota Student.

UND’s annual Lighting Tour took place last Thursday with groups of people scouring campus to find places that were unlit or unsafe.

The annual tour is sponsored by the UND Public Safety Office and is focused on making campus a safer place for those who have to walk through it at night.

This year’s tour was made up of about 60 students, faculty, staff and campus community members who split up into five groups, with each group taking on area of campus to walk around and observe.

“We conduct a tour of campus to look for safety concerns on campus,” University Police Sgt. Danny Weigel said. “We look for lighting, shrubbery, sidewalks, anything that could be a safety concern.”

Weigel said some of the biggest concerns were additional lighting between buildings and additional sidewalks for walking on campus. He said there weren’t any specific areas on campus that showed big concern, but more little areas scattered around the campus.

“We take all the comments, and we’re compiling a list, which we will submit to Chief Plummer for review,” Weigel said.

Plummer will review the concerns and speak with others involved in the Public Safety Office at UND to formulate a plan for the university on what to do about the problem areas.

“It’s a great event to keep campus a safe place,” Weigel said.

As for the future of the tour, Weigel said he hopes to see that concerns brought up this year are addressed, so they are not brought up again as issues in the future.

“We see improvement every year of the tour,” Weigel said. “It lays the groundwork for what needs to be addressed on campus.”

Megan Hoffman is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected].