Should Harvard Red Light or Green Light the Blue Lights?

On March 19, Meredith T. Schwartz ’27, along with all other Harvard undergraduates, received a text from the Harvard University Police Department: Due to a technical issue, all campus “blue light phones” were not functioning.

“I didn’t even know this existed,” she says. “I thought it was talking about the blue light coming from my phone. I was like, ‘What does that have to do with anything?’”

Schwartz later realized that HUPD was not, in fact, commenting on her own cell phone. The blue light phones are Harvard’s emergency phone system. Such systems are colloquially known as blue light phones for the colored light that accompanies each box. The idea is this: at any given point on campus, students should be able to see two phones, and if there’s an emergency, students can press a phone’s button, which will contact HUPD, so they can respond in minutes.

The lights have long been a selling-point for Harvard and other universities regarding campus safety: mentioning them has become a staple on most college tours. They appeared on Harvard and other campuses in the 1970s, and by the mid 2000s, nearly all schools had such systems.

Yet for how important they are to Harvard's discussion of safety, and despite their prevalence and accessibility, they’re not something most Harvard students think about day to day. Dotting the grounds like glittering blue breadcrumbs, Harvard’s 530 blue light phones blend in with streetlights and gates and other doodads, becoming just another thing on campus.

The buttons get activated about 40 times in a year — about once a week, if at all. According to HUPD spokesperson Steven G. Catalano, most of the time, these activations involve reporting a lock out, requesting an escort or asking for directions. Only a “very small percentage” of the calls would be considered emergencies.

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Sam Wright — who has worked as a Securitas guard on Harvard’s campus for 16 years — says that oftentimes when a button is pressed, HUPD asks Securitas guards to go check on the situation. Most of the time when Wright is sent to check, the person who called isn’t even there. He has also never had to resort to the police after responding to a blue light call. Sometimes, a drunk person hits the button unintentionally, and Wright helps them make their way.

Still, Wright believes the system can serve as a “quick way to get help.”

“It’s kind of the thing when you need it, you’re glad there’s something that you can use,” he says.

Even though the phones are rarely used for emergencies, some posit that their mere presence can work as a deterrent to crime.

“It’s also a reminder that, for someone who might have bad intentions, that there are ways this person can easily call for help,” says Ben Jobrack, a product manager at Aiphone, the company that supplies Harvard’s bluelight system. “This isn’t just an unmonitored situation. There are cameras and communication devices all around.”

Some students say that the blue lights’ presence makes them feel safer, even if they’ve never used the phones themselves.

“Personal physical safety was really big for me, applying to college,” says Helen Blake ’26. Now as a tour guide with the Harvard admissions office, she always mentions blue lights on her tours.

She feels mentioning the phones is “definitely important” to the admissions office. The admissions office has historically included blue lights in a document of points to mention on their tours. Last year, when staff and administration updated the document to reflect new priorities, blue lights easily made the cut.

Blue lights are also mentioned on Harvard’s official list of safety accommodations, alongside the presence of HUPD, a campus-wide shuttle service and a walking-escort service.

Aaliyah N. Decker ’26 said having emergency phones on campus was important to her parents when she was making her college decision. Her parents saw the phones as an important measure to combat sexual assault.

“I definitely knew about the lights, even before I came here,” Decker says. “There was an incident at a school that was pretty close to me where they had higher than average sexual assault cases on campus, and so they immediately started installing them. So that was one of the first things my parents looked at here.”

Hassan T. Looky ’26 doesn’t feel that the phones necessarily make him feel more safe. But he does wish there were more of them in Cambridge Common, which he often walks through to get the quad. “When you’re walking back at night, it’s just really, really dark,” Looky says.

On the other hand, Harmony G. Fisher ’26 also says that while she finds the phones comforting, she isn’t sure if she’d use them in an emergency.

“Even though the lights are reassuring to have them as a visual reminder, that definitely wouldn’t be my first thought,” she says. “I’d just pull out my phone and call 911, especially because it’s more accessible. The blue lights are every 100 or so feet, but your phone is just in your pocket.”

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Following a similar line of reasoning, some schools that previously had blue light systems have reversed course. In 2015, University of Colorado Boulder got rid of their emergency phone system, stating that no calls were made for emergency purposes. Two years later, University of Nebraska-Lincoln followed suit, citing the fact that people were more apt to use mobile phones, and there were also high rates of “intentional misuse compared to legitimate use.”

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Police Chief Hassan Ramzah also believes the way blue light phones have to be used contradicts best practices in the way his department teaches people to respond to danger. “Blue phones require someone to push the button and wait at that location,” he wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson. “We teach the University community to get away from any dangerous situation.”

Cost was another factor: University of Nebraska-Lincoln officials estimated that the continued costs for operating the phones over the next 15 years would be $1.7 million.

At Harvard, the costs from blue light phones incur in two ways: initial purchasing and installation of the phones, as well as costs to keep up the IT-department run system connecting the phones to HUPD. The 530 bluelight systems alone could cost anywhere from $689,000 to $3.82 million.

The cost of upkeep is unclear. At a minimum, each light costs approximately $10 a month each for operation and maintenance, while higher estimates suggest $200 per device annually. In Harvard’'s case, this would mean anywhere between $60,000 and upwards of $100,000 annually for blue light upkeep.

Still, it doesn’t seem like the emergency system is going away any time soon.

“I think having another way to contact HUPD besides a cell phone or landline is a good thing,” says Catalano.

—Staff writer Asher J. Montgomery can be reached at asher.montgomery@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @asherjmont or on Threads @asher_montgomery.

—Associate Magazine Editor Sage S. Lattman can be reached at sage.lattman@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @sagelattman.