Last week's first-ever University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA)-sponsored "Campus Night Out" event featured many important figures from the Penn State and State College communities: members of the Borough Council, Council of Commonwealth Student Governments (CCSG), Interfraternity Council, Police Department, University Health Services, Student Affairs, student athletes, etc.

While we are happy to see student and local leaders willing to unite to promote student safety, we also know that students are the most vital part of the equation in the effort to create a safer environment around campus and downtown.

The messages presented at Campus Night Out were important: fire safety, the flu and drinking responsibly were three major issues touched upon. But these issues need to penetrate to students, not just to leaders who already know the importance of understanding the dangers associated with these topics.

From here, beyond continuing to raise awareness, more preventative measures are needed to ensure that students are receiving and understanding these messages.

While large rallies and events are a great start, sometimes smaller, more individual student-based information sessions and sustained efforts are helpful.

For instance, a good start would be implementing mandatory sexual misconduct and substance abuse programming in FTCAP.

In addition, perhaps instead of requiring freshmen to enroll in seminars based on specific interests within majors, these first-year seminars could include information on actually being a student and learning to cope with college life and culture. Information regarding dangerous drinking and violence around campus would be more helpful than one academic credit's worth of what many students are currently studying in these seminars and will go on to study in their standard curricula.

We are happy to see leaders uniting in hopes to reach students and get the message of safety across, but we are still waiting, anxiously, to see how these efforts are followed through with to reach and truly affect students.