By Ellen Emily Lau

Each morning as we prepare ourselves to brave the stormy winds to head to the south side of the campus for class, we pass by a booth manned by the person who is responsible for the security of the dorm. This person very much well known as the RSR or better yet the

Residential Safety Representative is responsible for at least a hundred student’s lives if not even more. This person is supposed to prevent a person who could have the potential of robbing, raping, or stabbing someone from entering from the building.

May I remind you however that this person himself or herself is simply a student here at the University. He or she could be your classmate, a person who tried to take advantage of you at a local bar or even the skeevy kid you don’t trust that lives only two rooms away from you. However to our school, they believe that this student is responsible enough to take on the safety of approximately a hundred students plus.

Let me start off with the entire application process. In order to obtain a job within the Public Safety department of the school all you must do is apply. Missing something? Perhaps the interview process or a screening process to see whether he or she themselves had been a criminal in the past. Wait I forgot this person is a student of the University so it must be all right.

So let me continue on my ranting of the safety that is provided by the school in which I remind you many pay thousands to attend. Say you did get a job as a Residential Safety Representative and that of the many other students working for the department you actually want to protect the lives of your fellow peers. So following the responsibilities of your job you wear your uniform to work, request as many people as you can to swipe and for the most part do a job well done as your bosses would like to state.

However on the days where you pull the late night shifts you are confronted with the ones that have consumed too much alcohol, the ones that refuse to swipe and you are left ultimately defeated. Now, being a past RSR myself I’ve learned that the right action to take is to occur is to push the panic button that is located somewhere within the booth or to call for a Public Safety Officer. Depending on the night, the Public Safety Officer could arrive within three minutes flat or as late as almost thirty minutes after the occurrence. Now to my recollection within thirty-minutes a person who has entered the dorm rooms could easily commit the crime he or she intends to carry out. These crimes include breaking and entering a student’s room to battering another student.

Now it would not be fair to simply blame the Public Safety Officers on our campus for such occurrences, for the RSR is the person who was solely appointed the responsibility for the safety of the building. I’m sure I speak for a numerous amount of students when I state that it is often easy to pass by the RSR sitting in the booth stating you had lost your ID or to simply wait until a student exits the building and smoothly make your entrance. Some RSRs I’ve known has actually taken the responsibility to stop numerous students from entering the building by making sure each student swipes or to take down the visitor’s information. These RSRs I’ve observed in the end often become the victims of a number of harsh comments and names that are said directly towards them. Why must the person that is taking on the responsibility of your life and others be placed down in such a degrading manner?

My ultimate argument about the safety within our school is that it must be enforced and it must be given to someone who can hold a position of respect and power. As much as one can hope, a student cannot hold the responsibility of a hundred plus lives. The responsibility is simply impossible and needs to be handed to an individual who has received a thorough education on public safety. This individual must be one that all individuals have learned to respect and can have the ability to prevent a robbery or a rape from occurring.

If you believe that an individual of the age of 18 can hold such responsibility then I must apologize for my ignorance that I have shown in this article, however please do not forget this when you step into a dorm building without swiping or checking yourself in with the 18-year-old RSR that had tried to hook up with you at the local bar last night.