SOUTH BEND — IU South Bend students are meeting to talk about their safety. Some are worried after three shootings near campus in the past month.

The Student Government Association President told WSBT he wants to get a general idea from the student body about whether they feel safe near campus.

"I feel completely safe on campus," said IU South Bend student Maureen Pickar.

"I'm not too worried right now," echoed Jim Chodzinski.

But there are other students who say recent shootings so close to campus are making them uneasy.

"I'm going to be a little bit more careful," said IU South Bend student Jacob Denning.

That's why the Student Government Association is holding town hall meetings, giving everyone a chance to voice their concerns.

"We have people who live here for the first time," explained student body President Dane Blue. "We want to make sure that those three or 400 students over there, this is their home and we want them to feel safe."

Two concerns Blue said he's hearing a lot — students want more emergency phones and more lighting on and around campus.

"It's the responsibility of IU and the city of South Bend to make sure that our students are safe and feel safe. It's my job to inform them of how the students feel," he said.

Some students say they want the university to be more pro-active when it comes to letting them know about crime, even when the crimes aren't being committed on campus.

"I think there should be just kind of a higher alert," said Jacob Denning. "That would've been nice getting an e-mail to know about it."

Blue said the University doesn't want to over use its campus-wide e-mail alert system. Those e-mails are supposed to alert students when their safety may be in danger. But Blue explained the university doesn't feel recent shootings fell under that criteria.

"A situation like that happened Sunday [at] 3 a.m., the safety of all the students wasn't in danger," he said. "So to send out an alert like that, or an alert when that's not the case, we don't want to overuse the system."

Blue says he talked with the IU South Bend police chief about the possibility of getting a text alert system for students who live on campus, rather than an alert for all 7,700 students.

Students will have plenty of opportunities to voice their opinions to the Student Government Association. There will be more meetings in the coming months and the association has booths set up around campus.