Wednesday, February 18, 2015 // The Statement
6B
New app connects students with friends to
promote campus safety
by Taylor Wizner, Daily Staff Reporter
T
here’s a new Blue Light emergency phone on cam-
pus, and it’s in your pocket.
Two University students have created a mobile
app that allows students to stay safe while they travel alone
around campus. The app, Companion, tracks the user in real
time, estimating the period of travel needed to get to their
destination and checking up on them if they fail to make it
there.
Informatics senior Nathan Pilcowitz and Business senior
Danny Freed worked together to develop the app. The idea
for Companion came to them while they were both work-
ing in Chicago over the summer and looking for an app that
would really have an impact on campus.
“On college campuses — because it’s a smaller area —
you walk everywhere for the most part,” Freed said. “It’s
become a bigger societal issue with (the prevalence of) sex-
ual assault violence on campus.”
Companion has some features akin to apps like Google
Maps and Snapchat. The screen shows a map of the user’s
location, indicated by a blue dot. The user can press a point
on the map or type in the address to create their route.
Next, from their contacts, the user adds a “companion,”
who receives notifications via text message regardless of
whether they have a phone with the app. The companions
are automatically prompted to check in with their friend
if the user doesn’t reach their destination by the predicted
arrival time.
As the user walks, the screen functions as a security
interface — if he or she feels unsafe, the app can be used to
“ping” friends or even call 911.
Freed said the main purpose of the app is to make people
feel protected with help only a touch away.
“(An assault) might not happen 99 out of 100 times, but
the fact of the matter is you provide peace of mind,” Freed
said, of what the app provides its users.
The seniors are working on updating the app to be able to
interface with the University Police Department. The goal is
to integrate predictive patrolling, which would allow police
officers to watch areas where most students are walking
alone.
“The more people using it, the better the monitoring
system will get, the more data there is to keep them safer,”
Freed said.
Prior to downloading Companion, LSA senior Hailey
Lefkofsky walked home from the library at night with her
iPhone glued to her ear and carrying pepper spray as a pre-
caution. But she said she never had a consistent and reliable
safety system.
“I usually called a friend, but a lot of times needed to call
a few different people until someone was free to stay on
the phone,” Lefkofsky said. “Otherwise I’d arrange to text
someone when I got back but often times I’d forget and they
didn’t hear from me.”
Stressed from crime reports of students being assaulted
in recent years, Lefkofsky said the app’s instant response
features came as a relief.
“The campus alerts that we get, a lot of times you get that
the next day, but if I was walking down that same street
where there was an attack at 1:00 a.m. that’s something I
kind of want to know more immediately,” Lefkofsky said. “I
like that (Companion) is really instantaneous and you can
ping a friend or you can just call the police directly.”
“This makes me feel 100 times safer and I didn’t really
have an alternative,” she added.
Lefkofsky said she has tried University-sponsored safety
measures — like SafeRide and the Blue Light Emergency
Phones — to help her get places at night, but found them dif-
ficult to use.
“I remember hearing (about SafeRide) at freshman orien-
tation and thinking that was awesome, and then going to use
and it and being told I had an hour long wait,” she said. “Or
you could only use it twice a semester. I don’t think its really
helping the problem.”
Public Policy senior Max Kepes uses the app on week-
nights when he stays too late on campus working. He likes
the app for its simplicity.
“This (app’s) much more efficient than having to stay on
the phone with someone (and make) small talk for 15 min-
utes,” Kepes said. “You are able to walk home and alert your
friends. It’s nice for (my girlfriend) to share her location
when she’s walking home and for me to share mine just to
make sure the other person’s home safely.”
Given the app’s ability to track an individual’s location,
concerns have been raised over personal privacy. But the
founders said the visibility of the user’s location and user
information all depends on what the user chooses to share.
“They chose who is going to be their companion,” Pilcow-
itz said. “…And the police, they only would see points of data,
they can’t tell who you are until you say you are in trouble.”
The app also does not automatically select the same com-
panion each trip, allowing for the user to change who they
want to keep an eye on them, depending on where they are
going.
While Kepes said he doesn’t feel unsafe on campus, he
still likes to use the app as a precaution.
“If there is something that happens, it has the ability to
notify someone quickly, and I think that is very comforting,
despite already feeling safe on campus,” Kepes said.
Kepes is also looking forward to the app’s upcoming pre-
dictive patrolling feature.
“I think (UMPD) do a great job but there’s always room for
improvement,” Kepes said. “Instead of having a safety offi-
cer on State Street, say there’s a concentration (of students
feeling unsafe) near Hill Street or near (Shapiro Library) on
South U, it would be a little more efficient.”
When the weather is cold it becomes harder for students
to speak on the phone, so being able to have the app active in
your coat pocket is an added plus, Kepes noted.
“I leave the library, I put in my location and put it in my
pocket, get home and turn it off,” Kepes said. “It’s so simple
and it doesn’t take any extra time to make sure you’re safe.
The benefits are really worth it.”
Companion is free in Apple’s App Store and is currently
being developed for Android devices.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY RUBY WALLAU