Please make sure you put your important things in a safe place where you can lock it. Don't leave money or your credit or debit card on your desk. It might get stolen. If you have a bike, make sure you lock it. Always don't leave it unattended. Or if you have a skateboard, same thing as well. Make sure you keep it with you all the time. Because I have my skateboard stolen at Foodland. Make sure you lock it.
Do not go to the beach at night. Do not. Do. Not. No. No. And it's not just because, like, there's a bunch of, like, creepy people there at night, but, like, just don't trust anybody who wants to take you to the beach at night, because they probably don't mean good business. Also, always lock your bike or scooter or skateboard, whatever. It is BYU-Hawaii, but I definitely had my scooter stolen there. I had my bike seat stolen there as well. So, yeah, keep that in mind.
I think the very best advice I can give for safety is to not go swimming without a buddy and do not go hiking without a buddy. You want to have people with you because it's more fun to do with a friend anyway, but also in the mountains people have gotten lost and nobody knows where they are and in the ocean you could get swept away and nobody would even know. Please take a friend.
About safety around the campus, I don't think there's too many problems of it because we are about an hour and a half from downtown area, but if you gonna enjoy your Friday night or Saturday night around downtown there, I would just suggest that just avoid the place that have a lot of homeless, especially around Chinatown there. I personally serve my mission in Hawaii as well, and as a student at BYU-Hawaii right now, I actually not really like to go there after 8 or 9 o'clock around downtown area. Around Waikiki, it's good. That's where tourists are, but not downtown. And around the campus, it's pretty rural countryside, so I think it's pretty fine.
My safety advice would mostly be around food storage. There can be some crazy weather on the island, lots and lots of rain, lots of flooding, sometimes you lose power, things like that. So if you live off campus, I would recommend having a really decent food storage and probably a medical kit, as well as water is a really big thing to have on hand. If you live on campus, a lot of those things will be provided for you in the case that it's necessary. But I think even just being aware of the school's policies and protocols, if there is ever an emergency, is really important to know how they're going to contact you and what's going to happen in the case of any kind of emergency.
There have been incidences with bikes and lawn boards being stolen, but also just around driving around the island people tend to like break into cars or try to steal some personal belongings if you know they're openly seen in cars. So my word of advice is make sure that you take your personal valuables with you or put them in somewhere in your car that it won't be easily seen. And then for your bikes and lawn boards on campus make sure that you have like a lock for those so then when you put them somewhere at least dealing with not on the wall but like on a little lock thing or area where you can put your lawn boards and your bikes that you can have a lock to lock them up so they're safe. So yeah.
Just think like you were at home. There are areas at home where you wouldn't go and this will also be apparent when you're in Hawaii. So I would say use common sense. There's a lot of very friendly people, but certainly there are others out there that are looking for things that are not theirs and so on and so forth. But most importantly, I would say one of the great benefits of Hawaii is making friends. And so having a friend with you when you go on trips, you go swimming, you go snorkeling, you go hiking, right? Have somebody with you simply because sometimes you can get lost, you can have a difficult time with swimming. Currents are very strong.