Does Campus Safety really keep Citrus safe?

Imagine beautiful Citrus College on a nice sunny day. It’s calm and peaceful and it seems like nothing is really going on. But on January 31, 2023, a man was stopped by campus safety for harassing several students. The safety team showed up and handled the situation calmly and swiftly, and they soon escorted the man off campus. It’s just another day keeping the campus safe.

It was nice to see our college’s security in action. Students rarely get the opportunity to witness this form of protection as they’re always in classes or studying. But it makes you curious: how safe do students feel on campus on a daily basis? Security seems to be busy all the time, preparing for worst case scenarios, or maybe that one day in January was a fluke and they just sit around all day. The only way to really know was to ask Citrus College students if they feel campus safety is really making us safe or do they just offer the idea of safety?

I sat on the grass by the Language Arts building waiting for students to pass me. It was 2:00 p.m., and the sun was hot. I saw students approaching so I walked over to one of them and asked if they had a moment for questions regarding their views of campus safety. One student was Marlene A. At first she was hesitant, but she soon started talking about her experiences with campus safety. “I always see them busy driving the patrol cars around so I’m not sure they have downtime,” she said. “I have a later class and leave campus when it gets dark. It’s nice to be able to walk without worrying because I know campus security is around.” 

One common view is that multiple people had the same response as Marlene where they have a night class and noticed that campus security is more active at night.

But not all students feel this way. A handful of students that I approached felt the opposite towards the college’s security. Many of these students expressed that they often felt judged when they would pass a patrol car with an officer inside. The students said that sometimes they see the officers sitting in their patrol cars just staring at them. Other students also shared that they hardly see them do anything but drive around and check parking permits. When asked, these students said that they never saw campus security in action or taking down a suspect. But again, since most students spend their time in class and/or have class during the day, they don’t have the chance to experience what campus safety actually does for Citrus College.

To better understand their roles on campus, I spoke with a previous campus safety officer who worked on the Citrus campus for two years. I asked him some more in-depth questions about his former daily routines to see if the officers actually do more than drive around and check parking permits.   

I was skeptical at first because so many students said they didn’t think security did anything, so what is it that they do? I greet Jonathan with a smile and he does the same, and I dive right into the questions. Without starting with an intense question, I simply want to know what his most and least favorite part about working for campus safety was. “My favorite part was being able to protect the campus and my friends. My least favorite part was all the downtime I had on any shift I would work, it got boring pretty often.” So, that confirms one of my suspicions; security does just sit around when they don’t have anything else to do.

  So, that answer opened up a whole new curiosity in me. I wanted to know what they did exactly on that downtime.  Jonathan seems hesitant to answer, so he chooses his words carefully.

“I used to just walk around and keep an eye out on the area I was assigned to and radio in anything suspicious.”

The way he responds makes me wonder if there was more to his answer, but he doesn’t seem to want to give up that information. I continued anyway, hung on what other thoughts he may have had. . 

I wanted to delve a little deeper into his thoughts and emotions on the thought of the campus’s safety. I wondered if he felt he kept the students and staff safe during his time working here. Jonathan answers with a simple yes, but I wanted to know more. I wanted to know if he had a strategy of how he protected the campus. “What strategies would you use to handle situations on campus ?” confidently, he states “I would always stay calm no matter what and you always want to look at the situation and/or person to figure out the safest solution”. “Have you ever had to save a person’s life?” “No.” He says. 

I’m realizing that there isn’t much to being a campus safety officer other than giving parking tickets and watching the campus grounds. In hopes of ending this interview on a hopeful note, I ask if he had to ever collaborate with the police.  He thinks for a second and thoughtfully looks at me and says, “Personally I only got to work with the police once. It was a time we got a threat at Citrus. It was a super tense situation.” I don’t interrupt his story as this is pretty interesting; I allow the silence to enter the room so he can finish.  He recalls  Citrus getting a mysterious call on January 15, 2019.. “Someone had called and made a threat to shoot up the school.” Johnathan explains that the guy who had made the threat was, at the time Citrus College student, 30 year old Terrell Lee Bennett. He showed up on campus with an unmarked duffle bag and was actually locked inside the buildings with staff. The police and campus safety didn’t realize until about a couple hours later that’s where Bennett was. “All they had us do was stand and keep a lookout for anything suspicious. They had a bomb squad called as well.” I jot this all down in my notes, considering how to carry on the story after such an intense recollection. At the end of the event, everyone was safe and Bennett was detained after a six hour lockdown.  I wanted to bring the interview back down to an emotional level and finally asked if Jonathan felt it was worth being a part of the Citrus campus safety.  “I would say yes if you’re used to just standing around for hours because we really don’t get busy other than quotas. I enjoyed my time in campus safety but it didn’t feel like I did anything other than drive around handing out tickets and just taking my lunches and breaks.” I gathered my things, shook his hand, and thanked him for his time and left with some slight feeling of disappointment. I was  hoping to change the mind of the majority of students who feel like it’s a lazy job. But coming from a former Citrus security guard, he didn’t give me much hope.

Reviewing my notes, I finally came to a conclusion for my question. Campus safety is exactly what its name is. They keep our campus safe; they’re not meant to handle criminals everyday or take down shooters, they are just meant to help keep our campus safe. So yes, it is true that all they do all day is drive around issuing parking permits, but it is also true that they keep our campus somewhat safe.