CLEMSON UNIVERSITY — Classes started Wednesday at Clemson University after campus police spent a busy summer preparing for student safety.

Fall semester enrollment numbers are in, and 17,585 students are registered for classes at Clemson for the current school year.

“We did quite a few improvements on some of our systems last year, and we’ve continued those enhancements,” Clemson University Police Chief Johnson Link said. “We have additional emergency telephones that are located across campus. These are the phones that have the blue lights on them. If an individual is walking from a parking lot or between buildings, if they have a safety concern, they can go to these telephones. They dial directly into the police department, and we can send folks to that location.”

Several of these safety measures were implemented after the Virginia Tech tragedy on April 16, 2007, in which a lone gunman killed 32 people before taking his own life.

One safety feature that Clemson University was able to implement was tying into Pickens County’s E-911 service.

“In February, we became part of the Pickens County E-911 system, so that we are now capable of determining the physical location of a 911 call and that now includes cell phones,” Link said. “This is a great improvement over our previous system.”

Additional features were also added to the campus siren system.

“In the past year we’ve also added to the siren system across campus the voice activation feature that tells folks about the specific type of emergency,” Link said. “A person will hear the siren, and then a voice will actually tell what the emergency is, whether it’s a tornado warning or a public safety emergency. So folks will know exactly what the emergency situation is.”

Students and faculty also have the advanced capability of accessing safety information over the Internet.

“We also have our campus safety Web site, www.clemson.edu/cusafety,” Link said. “This page has information that’s available for individuals to look at to help keep themselves safe as well as where we put our timely warnings and notifications to folks on situations that are going on campus. So we’ve done quite a few improvements across campus.”

Students and faculty can also receive CUSafe Alert messages by e-mail by signing up to receive them as text messages on a cell phone. Brief messages can alert subscribers to possible danger or to major disruptions to campus services, such as weather cancellations.