Almost a year after a Carleton University student was brutally sexually assaulted in a lab on campus, the university has announced $1.6 million worth of new security measures in time for the start of classes.

The university has stepped up the numbers of cameras, security patrols and emergency phones on campus, Roseann O'Reilly Runte, the university's president and vice-chancellor, announced Tuesday at a news conference.

"We can't prevent every negative thing from happening, but we've done all that we could possibly do to be positive and to protect our students," she said.

The upgrades are the result of a university safety audit and a survey of more than 2,000 students.

They include improved lighting, designated safe pathways for students to use and swipe-card locks for after-hours access to the Steacie Chemistry building, where the assault took place, as well as to the Nesbitt Biology building.

The new cameras will eye pathways, parking lots, tunnels and parking garages, and gathering places such as the MacOdrum Library and Quad.

Sixty-three new cameras were recently installed, 48 more will be installed in September and another eight are planned for the future to bring the total of 167.

Measures don't target labs: student

Meghan Lamey, who graduated last year and was sitting in the library café on campus Tuesday, said the measures don't make her feel any safer, given the location of the assault last Sept. 1, in which a 23-year-old woman was beaten unconscious.

"Would there have been a camera in that room with that girl? Like — she was in a lab," Lamey said, adding that she was deeply shaken by the incident.

"I was scared. It made me not want to be on campus after dark. I didn't want to walk alone and I certainly didn't want to be in any of the buildings by myself after dark."

Grad student Cheri Bethune said she works in a lab at night just like the victim of last year's assault.

"You can't help but think about it," she said.

She added that she still doesn't think there are enough emergency phones on the Carleton campus relative to other universities.

"Right now, if something happened, I wouldn't know where to go."

The university is also launching a campus-wide safety awareness campaign, distributing booklets showing the locations of phones with a direct line to the university's security office and encouraging students and staff to program their cellphones with the Campus Safety phone number.

As of Tuesday, no arrests had been made in last year's assault.