SafetyWalk reopened last night with revised hours of operation and new efforts to increase the program's campus-wide visibility.

Student volunteers for the program escort students from location to location late at night. The Harvard University Police Department sponsors the service.

Program organizers said they feel that SafetyWalk has been a resource too many undergraduates fail to recognize.

As a result, this year's director, Laura D. Babkes '02, has changed the program's hours of operation to a range she said will better serve students' needs.

In past years, coed teams of "SafetyWalkers" have been on call between 12 a.m. and 4 a.m. on Sunday through Thursday evenings.

As part of Babkes' plan to increase student usage of SafetyWalk, those hours have been changed to 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.

"We really just felt that not many people were using [SafetyWalk] that late so we made it earlier so that more people will use it," Babkes said.

Not everyone is confident that the new hours represent the best way to secure that level of visibility. While acknowledging the difficulty in getting students to fill the 2 to 4 a.m. shifts, 1998 SafetyWalk Director Randolph Bell '00 worried that the time change will actually decrease the number of students who rely upon the service.