Wichita State University has joined a growing number of institutions to launch the Rave Guardian mobile app on campus. The popular personal safety app effectively turns a smartphone into a personal safety device, enabling friends and family to track student commutes.

According to an official university release, students using the free-to-download Guardian app can create a profile complete with pertinent personal information, as well as invite family and friends to join their safety network.

Once downloaded, users can use the app to request friends or family to be “guardians” and virtually walk with them on or off campus. The Wichita State University Police Department can also be listed as a guardian. The app requires location services to be enabled in order for a guardian to pinpoint a user’s location in the event of an emergency.

The app is designed for those times when a student needs to leave a class or study session late at night or is simply going out for the evening. Users can set the amount of time they believe it will take to reach their destination and add guardians to their timer session. Upon arrival, the user can deactivate the timer from your phone, but if the timer runs out and the session expires, the app will begin to notify the guardians that the user has selected.

If a student chooses university police as their guardian, they are encouraged to coordinate ahead of time and decide what action is necessary should the session expire — contact the user directly, the police or another specified party. If university police are the chosen guardian, they will only have access to the user’s information and location if the session expires, the user deactivates their PIN number with the duress code, or if they make an emergency call.

The Duress PIN is a feature of the app that is used in the event a user is coerced into deactivating their Safety Timer session. Instead of entering the regular PIN, a user can enter their Duress PIN, which immediately puts the travel session into Alert status and contacts university police.