In my earlier days as a naïve, starry-eyed freshman in The Poly’s news department, I talked to a lot of students on this campus. I was always surprised to hear what they had to say about authority figures, particularly Public Safety. Of course, now that I’m older and wiser (I believe I aged 20 years over the last summer alone) I understand that it’s mostly—though not exclusively—because they are authority figures.
To be fair, I have heard about incidents involving Public Safety officers that don’t exactly cast a favorable light on the department. In particular, I’ve heard a number of stories involving Public Safety cruisers and some less-than-legal and unsafe driving practices. In my later days in the news department I tried to put together an article about things like that, but I couldn’t get people to go on record.
Most of what I hear, though, is heavily influenced by the fact that when Public Safety is involved there are other circumstances—a theft, an automobile accident, generally someone breaking the rules—that make the situation tense. Tension affects how the students and the officers involved will react as well as how they will perceive the incident when looking back on it.
It’s a shame students have so little respect for Public Safety, no matter what the cause. The purpose of having a campus police organization is to make us feel safer. While that may add inconvenience—we can’t do everything we want—that is not, in fact, their ultimate goal. Their job is to make sure our college experience isn’t interrupted by things like injury, theft, or our dorms being burned to the ground.
In an ideal world Public Safety officers would discharge their duties without ever making a mistake, with a consistently positive attitude, and in a way that never prevented students from doing whatever they wanted to do. In addition, my IED project wouldn’t be declared "impossible" just because it violates a few laws of thermodynamics. Unfortunately for all of us, it’s not an ideal world.
Nonetheless, Public Safety is not out to get us; there are not weekly meetings to discuss how best to oppress the student body. Keep that in mind the next time you’re lashing out against our "terrible" authority figures.
