Workshop Rough Draft: Week 10 (oh my gosh - ITS WEEK 10!!)

Utopia on the Hill

Andrew Vermeulen answers the shrilly ringing phone. He is sitting behind the desk in the Security Office at Kalamazoo College, wearing a stiff-looking blue shirt and black pants. His hair is cropped and short, and, much like the sparsely decorated security office itself, he looks like a man of business. On the other end of the line, a high-pitched female voice sounds panicked, desperate. It is the mother of a student at the college. She sounds as if there is an emergency, but Andrew’s face does not contract or express any sense of urgency. He holds the phone away from his ear, sighing. Her son is lost, the mother says. He must be in a very bad situation. The mother has not heard from her son in 48-hours. Can Andrew please track him down on campus? No, she does not know his room number. Or what residence hall he lives in.
Andrew hangs up the phone. “People expect us to know and do everything,” he says with a slight grimace. “I’d say seventy-five to eighty percent of the time they [parents] don’t know what dorm their kid lives in.”
This is a typical Thursday night in the Security Office, according to Vermeulen. Vermeulen has worked in Security at the school for three years, and, unlike what many students might expect, the majority of the petty crimes that security is called to deal with are just that: petty. Sometimes, like the mother calling about her missing son, the things that security is called upon to handle aren’t even crimes at all.
If there is anything stressful about the job, it seems to be not the occasional stolen I-Pod, or the even more occasional campus flasher. If anything, it’s the kids at K College themselves that pose problems for security. “They so pamper and shelter these kids – it’s laughable,” says Vermeulen.
He recalls being taunted and laughed at by students. As he makes the rounds, he says he is often thrown dirty looks. He says that several students on his most recent round yelled something about a “police state” at him before running off. He feels students don’t give security a fair appraisal. “There’s a perception that our department is bumbling. We’re put in positions where we can’t win. We’re constantly made to look foolish,” says Vermeulen. He cites the lack of authority campus security guards have. Unlike what many students believe, security guards have no power to touch or arrest students. In fact, security is not even authorized to seize illicit drugs from students. He states that if he were to “arrest” a student, it would qualify as nothing more than a citizen’s arrest.
As one of the few minority members of the Kalamazoo College staff, director of security Tim Young reports being treated badly by students as well. In particular he says that even on a campus where students pride themselves on being open-minded, Young felt discriminated against for his first year on the job. “It took awhile, it wears you down. If you’re not a strong person, it’ll get to you,” Young says. He comments that the other minority workers that students see on campus are typically in low level positions, and he says he feels as though they are treated badly by students. “I would venture to say myself and Dean Joshua are fortunate in that our positions are different,” he comments, referring to the one of the college’s deans, who is also black.
Five years ago, when Young first came to the department as the chief of security on campus, he recalls a dispute he had with the BSO, the Black Student Organization on campus. As a black man, he insists that his staff treats students of color with the same policies as white students, but he will admit that the perception of unequal treatment is still there. Young recalls that the BSO came to him asking to borrow a security guard uniform for a skit. They had planned to depict what they felt was racist treatment and racial profiling by security guards on campus, and needed the uniform as a prop.
Young does say that he feels rude or insensitive behavior from students directed toward him and his staff has gotten better since the arrival of college President Dr. Wilson Oyelaran. “A chunk of it [the racism] changed when the president came.”
When all is said and done, Young attributes the rude behavior he and his staff have experienced to the relative privilege of students at Kalamazoo. “Some students have never worked – and they don’t have compassion.” Amanda Geer, a freshman at Kalamazoo College, feels strongly that everyone is nice to security and members of the staff at K. “I’m nice to everybody,” she says. “Except for people I hate.”
If there is any kind of criminal activity bubbling under the surface of K’s seemingly idyllic campus, for the most part it has to do with drugs and alcohol. Under the Cleary Act of 1989, all undergraduate universities in the United States are required by law to report all criminal activity that occurs on campuses across the country. Last year, while there were no aggravated assaults or reported cases of robbery, there were one hundred and fifty five liquor law violations, and ten drug-related violations. In every one of the liquor law violations, not one arrest was made. Instead, disciplinary action by the school was taken. All but two of the drug-related offenses were treated in the same manner.
Young, who retired from the Paw Paw, Michigan state police force several years ago, takes the job of supervising security at K seriously, but ultimately, doesn’t seem too worried about criminal activity on campus. He sits in the over air-conditioned security office, so cold compared to the heat of the oncoming summer weather outside that goose bumps rise on his brown skin. “We all get held accountable, at the end of the day,” he says, and he leans back in his chair.