A new app designed to assist college campuses with any security and maintenance issues has been made available for Missouri Southern students. The app, known as Campus Eye, is currently being used by Southern’s Physical Plant Department and University Police Department.

“Every student has got their phone out 90% of the time,” said Bob Harrington, director of Physical Plant, “so [the app] gives them the opportunity to go and report an issue immediately without having to go to a computer, without having to find an RA or somebody to report it to.”

Any students, faculty or staff with an iPhone or Android smartphone can download Campus Eye and make it unique to the Missouri Southern campus. Once installed and setup, users can use the app to take pictures of any kind of maintenance issue, dangerous situation, or security issue on campus and send it, along with a text message, directly to either the University Police Department or Physical Plant.

“It makes it a lot easier for us to be able to get in and take care of the problem, and we know exactly what the problem is before we get there,” said Harrington.

Once a picture and message has been sent, the information will immediately print off via a small printer known as the MessageQube.

“It’s kind of cool because it’ll print the picture and it’ll actually print a GPS map of exactly where it came from, also,” said Harrington. “So we can pinpoint exactly where [the issue] was at that point.”

According to Harrington, the app first began to see usage on campus just before the semester started, when students were moving in to the residence halls and two street lights between Blaine and McCormick stopped working.

“A contractor who is building the new residence hall had accidentally cut a wire,” said Harrington. Workers from Physical Plant received the Campus Eye reports and fixed the wires, but there was still another problem with the system that they were not aware of.

“We were sent a message using Campus Eye that the lights were still out,” said Harrington. “So I emailed [Ken Kennedy, chief of campus police] and said ‘Okay, you’ve got officers out here every night all night long, please ask them to let us know if they see any of parking lights, street lights, building lights that are out so we can take care of it.’

“The next morning we had probably twelve campus eye messages from them with the exact locations where the lights were out. It told us exactly what was out so that we can get it taken care of and I was very appreciative of it.”

Campus Eye was developed by Kansas City based company Mobile Innovations LLC and costs approximately $1500 a year to use. According to Harrington, a sales representative from the company contacted the Physical Plant office to see if Missouri Southern would be interested in using the app.

“We met with her and we saw this as a real opportunity for getting this immediate response to do that,” said Harrington. “As soon as she left, I gave the information to [Ken Kennedy, …..] and said ‘this is something you’re probably very interested in, too, because it could really help both of us.”

For more information about the use of Campus Eye at Southern, contact Bob Harrington at (417) 625-3191.

“For the price, it’s an extremely reasonable opportunity.”