Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
16 July 2020 | Story Valentino Ndaba
Add these emergency safety contacts to your speed dial.

Staying safe during the coronavirus pandemic extends to ensuring that students at the University of the Free State (UFS) are safe from crime. Crime in South Africa remains an unfortunate reality which continues to affect students, staff and the institution in general. 

“Crime requires constant vigilance from the community and this can only be achieved through initiatives that are aimed at informing the community on what to do and what not to do. To this end the BSafe Safety First flyer is geared at informing specifically the student community on safety measures that must be taken,” said Cobus van Jaarsveld, Assistant Director: Threat Detection, Investigations and Liaison at Protection Services.

The Safety First flyer is a guide for students to be crime-conscious whether at their accommodation, on the street, or in their vehicles. It also offers tips on how to act responsibly as far as alcohol and drugs are concerned.

Engaging students on their safety 

UFS Protection Services recently engaged with off-campus residence students in Bloemfontein in order to provide tips on how to stay safe in their neighbourhoods. During the engagement, the new Safety First pamphlets were distributed, and students were encouraged to join the Student Crime-Stop Brandwag WhatsApp group.

As from 15 June 2020, Nissi Armed Response was deployed from 18:00 to 06:00. This initiative has already led to them responding to several suspicious persons and vehicles, as well as some minor incidents and disturbances. Two arrests were made on different occasions as a result of the deployment. In the first incident, a suspect was arrested on 27 June 2020 after a burglary in Brandwag, and the second relates to a suspect who was arrested on 10 July 2020 after threatening students at Universitas.

These successes were the result of student and community participation in providing information, coupled with excellent response from private security companies, including Nissi Armed Response, VR Security, and BloemSec.

News Archive

Department undergoes peer review
2006-10-19

The Language Practice division of the Department of Afro-asiatic Studies, Sign Language and Language Practice at the University of the Free State (UFS) conducted a peer review.  This is the first peer review based on the new procedures for quality assurance that were implemented in the Faculty of Humanities.  The peer review ended with a report from external assessors and the compilation of corrective plans.  One of the aims of the assessment is to determine the department’s national profile en to determine its international acceptability. 

Here are, from the left:   Prof Jackie Naudé (Departmental Chairperson: Afro-asiatic Studies, Sign Language and Language Practice), Dr Peet Venter (Senior lecturer in charge of quality control in the office of the Dean: Faculty of the Humanities), Dr Maeve Olohan (Lecturer in Translation, University of Manchester in the United Kingdom), Dr Anne-Marie Beukes (Chairperson of the South African Institute for Translators and lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Literature Science at the University of Johannesburg) and Prof Gerhardt de Klerk (Dean: Faculty of the Humanities).  

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept