The Colorado Mesa University (CMU) campus saw police presence on 12th Street near the University Center parking garage on Sunday, Nov. 17. This was due to a Public Service Announcement (PSA) on how to cross the street safely.

The CMU Marketing and Communications Office contacted Western Colorado Community College (WCCC) about making a series of PSA’s on how to cross the street safely. WCCC began filming on the crosswalk outside Lowell Heiney Hall with help from the Grand Junction Police Department (GJPD) to block traffic for the brief moments of filming.

“If anybody’s ever driven down 12th, they know that the crosswalks can be kind of a burden sometimes, and people do it incorrectly a lot, both drivers and crossers, and so, [GJPD] and CMU have teamed up with the WCCC digital filmmaking program to create this these series of PSA’s about crossing 12th safely,” Joel Cochran, a sophomore Digital Filmmaking major and Director for the PSA said.

Using the crosswalks on 12th Street could be a dangerous task. In the past, students and community members alike have been involved in vehicle accidents while inside the crosswalks.

During the years of 2016 and 2017, several cyclists were hit while riding a bicycle inside the crosswalk, prompting signs to go up stating to dismount the bicycles before crossing.

“My job is safety, to keep the campus safe and to keep people safe. So my goal in participating in this is to keep the people driving on this road safe and keep the people crossing safe,” Licia Smith, a GJPD police officer stationed at CMU said. “It’s just to use humor to get across the point that it really is important to cross the road safely with the amount of traffic that’s on these roads and the amount of people crossing the road. It’s a lot safer if everybody is doing it correctly.”

The PSA featured CMU’s mascot Rowdy crossing the street incorrectly and meeting Smith on the other side.

“I see a lot of people misusing [crosswalks] or just carelessly going across the street. So personally, I’m happy to be a part of this because I think that it could bring more awareness or just more people could be more cautious when they cross the street so I was happy to be a part of this,” Dule Hammonds, a junior a CMU studying Mechanical Engineering said.

The PSA’s will be ready in January for the Spring 2020 semester.