MSUM Looking For New Safety app After Passing on Bluelight

MSUM officials say the school is in need of a safety app for its students.

The school tired an app last spring called Blue Light but didn’t get response it hoped for.
 
To see if the Blue Light safety app was a right fit, MSUM participated in a pilot program before they decided to subscribe.

Interim public safety director Karen Mehnert-Meland says during that period only 51 students used the app, which wasn’t worth the $10,000 investment.
 
“Saw that we had just that few of users,” she says. “We went back and forth that would have been rather expensive, and we decided to kind of put a pause on it.”
 
She says when it comes to why students didn’t take to the app, she doesn’t’ feel that it was due to a lack of promotion.
 
She says, “Publicity was well done, and just for whatever reason students didn’t choose to download it.”
 
One MSUM student we spoke to says if she would have heard about the APP she definitely would have used it.
 
“For your own safety, and being a girl. I probably would of downloaded it if I would of heard more about it before today,” said Michaela Hauge, student at MSUM.

Mehnert-Meland says the school has reached out to its neighboring colleges to see what they are using.

NDSU is currently subscribed to the Path Light safety app.

Mike Borr Director of Police and Safety at NDSU says they’re app has over 300 users.

He says the successful piece has been the ability to tie the app to their student-card access system.
 
“It’s that integration piece where it ties in portions of our system. That really gives us the benefit that we’re seeing in terms of being able to respond,” said Borr.
 
Karen says moving forward the school is still looking into other apps that they hope will be more successful.
 
Students and faculty at MSUM can still download the blue light app, but will have to pay safety feature through their app store.