In recent years, students and administrators have worried about security on Harvard's campus. After a number of violent crimes in the Cambridge area, a group of students have acted reinforce the University's existing escort services by establishing a walking escort service of their own. The organizers of SafetyWalk are on a quest to make sure that...

Currier House resident Katherine A. Hanify '93 knows it's unsafe to walk alone.

"I've run into bad situations walking from Lowell to Eliot. That's a block," Hanify says. "I once ran into 12 guys who were just grabbing me."

Now Hanify is taking steps to ensure that she and other Harvard students won't have to walk alone on Cambridge streets after dark any longer.

Hanify and four others have organized a new walking escort service called SafetyWalk, which aims to supplement the current University shuttle and vehicle escort services by providing an option for students going too short a distance to ask for a bus or car.

Hanify says she hopes students who normally walk alone to Store-24 will now call for a walking escort instead of risking their safety for a late-night snack.

"It would be useful for distances that are so short that it would be annoying to wait for the shuttle," Hanify said.

Organizers also say that walking escorts will provide students with an option to waiting outside late at night for an escort or shuttle.

"Often you have to wait for a driving escort or a shuttle for 10 to 20 minutes, which is no safer than just walking home," says Minna Jarvenpaa '93, former co-chair of the Radcliffe Union of Students, which donated SafetyWalk's $800 budget.

The University runs a vehicle escort service between 7 p.m. and 3 a.m. In addition, the regular campus shuttle service runs until 1 a.m. on weekdays and 2 a.m. on weekends.

Sgt. Lawrence Fennelly of the Harvard University Police Department says the two escort cars transport 1,500 to 1,800 students and employees annually.

Fennelly says that the police department fully supports the Harvard students' efforts to get SafetyWalk off the ground.

The department is providing training for walking escorts on how best to respond to an attack and how to patrol the campus at night.

Walkers will escort students, faculty and staff Sunday through Thursday from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Organizers hope to eventually operate seven days a week.

Teams of escorts will patrol the Quad, the Yard, and the River Houses, joining any lone walkers and responding to calls relayed to them by a dispatcher through beepers.