Excited about the U of MN's new Safety Awareness Campaign Awareness Campaign

[A friendly UMPD officer making sure that nobody blocks the Dinkytown bike lane.]

Good news! This email from the University administration just came across my desk:

Vice President Kathleen O'Brien wrote:

Dear students, Faculty and Staff,

Welcome to the second half of the 2011-12 academic year. As you can certainly see, University safety awareness campaigns have dramatically changed the campus landscape since the beginning of the Fall Semester. Decals all over the pavement, threatening signs near all the sidewalks, a liberal disbursement of meaningless tickets, and a heavy and out-of-touch police presence throughout campus mean that staying aware of safety campaigns will be the responsibility of every pedestrian, bicyclist, and motorist on campus.

Ignoring this Sign is Easy, Reading this Sign is Hard 

Our new safety campaign awareness campaign – Ignoring this Sign is Easy, Reading this Sign is Hard – is designed to remind students, faculty, staff and visitors that following some very simple safety awareness campaign awareness guidelines will go a long way toward keeping everyone aware of safety awareness campaigns. This means that bicyclists must always read safety awareness signs, stop and think about safety awareness advertisements placed on the sidewalk; pedestrians must read listen to automated safety awareness announcements; and motorists be able to get to their parking lots easily and quickly.

While the Awareness about Safety is Easy campaign will help remind you to be aware of safety campaigns and the University of Minnesota Police will be out reminding people about awareness of safety campaigns, awareness of safety campaigns is ultimately the responsibility of everyone in the University community. Please do your part to stay aware of safety campaigns and don’t be shy about reminding others to be aware of safety campaigns as well. With that in mind, we have also worked closely with the Metropolitan Council and Central Corridor contractors to ensure bus drivers and construction workers encourage awareness of safety campaigns on and around campus.

Resources
Without question, University safety campaigns are difficult to understand. I encourage you to fully explore your awareness options. Thank you for your continued patience and cooperation.

As you can imagine, I'm excited about this recent development at the University of Minnesota. I've been a vocal critic of the U's transportation policies, and it's nice to see that the administration is finally taking notice of the problems with their approach to designing streets and public spaces on campus.

Here are a couple of examples of the new campaign in action!