Sure Walk Growth
- sarahremelius
- Aug 15, 2018
- 3 min read
By: Sarah Remelius and Amanda Bray
April 23, 2016

A student-run volunteer group working to make sure students get home safely has grown exponentially since freshman Haruka Weiser was found dead on campus on April 5.
According to a Students United for Rape Elimination (SURE Walk) volunteer, Hannah Nover, they have been walking about 30 to 50 people home a night instead of the usual one to two people since the death was made public in an email from UT President Greg Fenves. Because of the large increase in requests, SURE Walk has doubled their amount of volunteers and added another location in the Peter T. Flawn Academic Center (FAC) in addition to the one at the Perry-Castaneda Library (PCL) and the Student Activity Center (SAC).
“Before the tragedy, we would be lucky to have one or two people ask for a walk for the entire four hours we are stationed at the front of the PCL. Sometimes we would just sit there for four hours too,” Nover said.
Taral Patel, Student Government Chief of Staff, and Krishan Sachdev, director of SURE Walk, met with UTPD on April 13 to discuss offering SURE Walk services on weekends, revamping SURE Walk practices and protocols, and creating a SURE Walk application for smart phones.
“I mainly find myself thinking ‘Oh, shoot. It's Friday, SURE Walk doesn't show today,’” said freshman Sharon Tieu, who uses SURE Walk when she studies late at the library. “I have to schedule where I want to be to study around that. I'm not sure why SURE Walk isn't implemented on Fridays, but Friday nights are the nights when I feel most unsafe.”
Since the death, students have made petitions towards SURE Walk asking for longer hours of service and for it to be a paying job for volunteers. Facebook groups, such as Walk Together UT, have also been created to make sure students have someone to walk with after the hours for SURE Walk ends.
“There are still students who need to walk home later than 2 a.m. or in the early hours of the morning that feel uncomfortable doing so, especially come exam time when many students will be out studying late,” wrote student Elena Grijalva in her petition to increase SURE Walk’s hours. “By increasing SURE Walk's hours, these students will have an increased sense of security and feel free to study until they need to and still get home safely.”
SURE Walk is one of the oldest agencies of Student Government and is in service Monday through Thursday from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. after the first two weeks of the fall and spring semesters and does not operate during the summer. Volunteers are gathered from UT organizations, and upon ordering a walk, two volunteers, one male and one female, will meet the person requesting the walk at their current location and will walk them to their destination.
“For me, it didn’t really start out as anything more than a service project on a calendar but it has become so much more than that in the last month or so,” Nover said. “It's actually a bit surreal to see the popularity so high.”
The program was launched in 1983 by former Student Body President Paul Begala to “bring attention to a heavily ignored but vitally important safety issue that still exists on campuses throughout the U.S.” and to provide a service to fix this according to Patel. The service was re-launched late last year by former President Xavier Rotnofsky and Vice-President Rohit Mandalapu.
“I think it's to the student's advantage to utilize these sorts of safety programs that UT offers to its fullest potential-- it's better to be safe and not risk walking alone at night,” Tieu said.
Although SURE Walk has been one of the most talked about ways to get home safely by the University of Texas Police Department, other options they suggest for getting home late at night include calling for an Uber, Lyft, or cab, walking in groups, or requesting a courtesy escort from UTPD. Other tips they suggest for those who have to walk alone include avoid dark areas, be alert of surroundings and any other people on the street, keep your keys in your hands, and to alert a friend so they know where you are and when you should get back.
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