Next time you call Public Safety to unlock your door, it may be one of your classmates.
Lyndon State College has eight part time Public Safety student-officers who work part-time on campus. They usually work about eight to twelve hours a week, where they have a wide range of duties and jobs to handle.
“I just tell people what they can and cannot do,” said Lindsay Hoyt, a student officer on campus. Her job consists of many responsibilities, from locking buildings at night, to checking the boiler rooms on campus.
During the day, most student officers are answering the phones in the public safety office. Hoyt said that when she answers the phone, she does anything from transferring calls to answering questions the best that she can.
George Hacking, director of public safety at LSC, works with the eight student officers on a daily basis. He also works with three full-time officers, and two more part-time officers.
“The difference between us, the non student officers and the student officers, is that we are held to a higher standard of work than the students,” said Hacking, “Especially when it comes to situations on campus, hours, and action taken when responding to calls.”
Although the full-time officers are held to a higher standard, this does not mean that a student officer cannot document students.
“I usually document the situation and write down the room number,” Hoyt said. “Then I give the information to the officers who can deal with it when they are on duty.”
Hacking said that the student officers are there to assist the full-time officers. Their responsibilities are to help with duties such as boiler room checks and looked doors so that the full-time officers can handle situations involving violence or student safety.
If there are no officers available, then the situation is usually dealt with by the residence hall directors.
“We work together all the time on a lot of things,” said Hacking about residence life on campus.
“The key thing is knowing your resources and who to call for information and help,” said Hacking.