Student Government hosted a forum Monday to discuss safety in Five Points after last week’s shooting involving first-year international business student Martha Childress.
“I was kind of concerned that the university put out a statement from their perspective without coming to the students, and I think that this is a great forum to have to get our feedback because if anyone’s been downtown recently, you realize it’s not a safe place, obviously, or we wouldn’t be having these types of forums,” fourth-year hospitality student Jamie Gardner said. “I would just suggest the university really look at the statement and action statements they put out a little closer and get more student feedback.”
The forum established that USC students have concerns regarding the issues at hand and wish to be heard by the surrounding community, though some students disagreed on what steps should be taken to make Five Points safer.
“One thing amazing about the University of South Carolina is that we’re pretty much the driving economic force of this city, and our voice is a lot louder and a lot more powerful than students maybe realize,” Five Points bar owner and fifth-year business student Alex Waelde said.
The primary proposals from the forum were based off of “Martha’s List,” a series of suggestions presented by the Childress family at a press conference earlier in the day.
Many students felt that one of the more prominent issues is stopping loitering in the area.
“If you go down on a normal night, you will see people are not adding to the business of Five Points, but are adding to the crowd and the stress. I think just getting this issue completely alleviated is the perfect short-term solution for us,” first-year international business student Amanda Cosenza said. “Right now, if we as students want it to be safe, we need to make it for the people who are going, spending money, having a good time and not being a nuisance to the community.”
Community outreach was a popular suggestion for a long-term solution.
“I also think that something that would have an impact in a lot of ways would be a community outreach piece to the people who live in those communities, something that shows the school’s presence, something that gets the word out there that this type of thing that happened is preventable by getting involved and trying to be proactive and trying to do something before it gets any worse,” third-year criminal justice student Jason Cuzzupe said.
Others urged students to take action further than just attending the forum if they wanted to see results in the future.
“Really, what we need to be doing as students is beating down the doors of the correct people,” Gardner said. “The mayor himself, the city manager, all of the city officials need to know what we are demanding of them.”
Some students said they want to do their best to make Five Points a better place specifically because of Martha Childress.
“We all want to have a safe time in Five Points, and we wouldn’t want what happened to Martha happen again because we let this issue die,” first-year business student and Zeta Tau Alpha member Jennings Craft said. “This Zeta is not going to let what happened to Martha be forgotten, whether it’s two years from now or ten years from now.”