One thing that not many people outside of the college experience is North Central College’s police officers. Only those who are frequently on campus really get to know these officers…or should I say students.

A good majority of the campus’ police officers are students like me. They are still in college or fresh out. You see them roaming up and down the residence halls occasionally, dressed up in their police uniform doing nothing but making sure the noise is not too loud.

The campus safety officers take turns sometimes shuttling students back and forth to doctors appointments and “patrolling” the campus. I believe their power is quite limited because I have not witnessed them do anything besides talking to each other, asking if someone is “okay” and more walking.

The college does have real, licensed officers that are more trained than the students. You can tell which officers these are by their lack of excitement to be on campus and their uniform have a small hand gun attached to it. You can also tell the “real” officers from the students because the real officers ticket people’s cars in the parking lots.

For as long as I have been at the school, nothing physically violent has happened on the school’s premise where a campus safety officer had to intervene. Honestly speaking, I don’t think that a campus safety officer would know what to do if something like that happened but that’s just a personal opinion.

There have been many incidents with campus safety in general. A lot of students complain that if a report is incident, whatever it may be, the officers are slow to respond and seem like they do not really care.

There have also been reports of campus safety not doing their jobs. I once witnessed a handicapped student call campus safety for a ride back to his dorm room because the weather was inclement. It was super icy outside, too icy to walk safely. Campus safety said they would not help this handicapped person and hung up on the student.

I personally called campus safety a few moments later saying that you need to pick up this student because he needs help. With an annoyed sigh, the officer said, “Alright I’ll come get him.”

It’s these kind of interactions with campus safety that make any student feel like they are not actually protected by the college. All in all, my recommendation is to know how to not need campus safety because it’s like they aren’t even here anyway…they’re only here to give you parking tickets.