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Catharine Kendall Emerald
Department of Public Safety Officer Chris Rouse talks with the Residential Adviser of
Henderson Hall, Sarah Robar, and the RA of Debusk Hall, Nick Rountree.
DPS
continued from page 1A
basis, it’s going to help students ...
feel more comfortable,” said Sandy
Schoonover, director of residence
life for University Housing.
Planning for the new sub-station
was completed over the summer,
she said, but there are still several
details that need to be worked out.
The hope was that the sub-station
would be up and running by the
end of this week.
With a schedule covering mainly
evenings and weekends, the three
officers will be stationed in
Hawthorne 115 in the Walton Com
plex.
Aside from answering calls from
the halls and being resources for
both students and housing staff, the
officers will accompany different
sets of resident assistants on their
rounds every few nights.
The officers are not there to hand
out tickets to the students,
Schoonover emphasized; rather,
they are there to “build communi
ty, get to know the students, and get
to know the student staff,” she said.
Fitzpatrick added that he hqpes
DPS will be seen more as a resource
than as an entity of law enforce
ment.
“We don’t want to be intrusive.
We just want to be readily avail
able,” he said. “I strongly believe
[this program] can work and will
work.”
There is reason to believe it will
work. At the University of South
Dakota where Schoonover previ
ously worked, a similar program
was instituted five years ago.
“It worked out fabulously,”
Schoonover said. It functioned so
well that the officers would even
come into the halls and play pool
with students.
“It was an amazing transforma
tion, and that’s something that I’m
certainly hoping will happen
here,” she said.
In the past, relations have been
strained between students and
DPS, largely because officers would
only call on the residence halls
during crisis situations,
Schoonover said. Not only dicf that
take away from good relations, but
“there’s a tremendous amount of
distrust that has been built around
it,” she said.
Another contributing factor was
• that several officers answered calls.
Now, Schoonover said, there are
three officers whose primary re
sponsibility will be the residence
halls.
Familiarity, DPS and Housing
hope, will ease the tension felt in
any crisis situations encountered
throughout the year.
It seems the effects are already
being felt among some of the RAs.
Returning RA Nick Rountree, a
senior Spanish major and CIT mi
nor, said the biggest difference this
year will be the personalities of the
officers.
In the past, he said, DPS officers
came off as stern and hardly
smiled. However, upon meeting the
three officers assigned to the resi
dence halls, Rountree’s attitude
changed.
The officers had volunteered and
were interviewed for the positions,
and Rountree saw a definite differ
ence.
“I find them to be very intelligent
and very friendly,” he said.
In addition, RAs may now ask
the officers to step back in a situa
tion if they feel they should be han
dling it themselves. Rountree said
this should help students see that
RAs are not cops and are not out to
ruin them.
Jessica Lane, a senior fine arts
major and the assistant complex di
rector for Bean, said that the offi
cers being stationed in the halls
and coming on rounds with RAs
should improve communication.
Reactions among returning resi
dents are of both disinterest and
unease.
Junior English major Max Lewis
said that he’s never had a problem
with DPS before, so he doesn’t feel
threatened by the officers’ pres
ence.
But Zak Scotton, an undeclared
sophomore, had a different view.
“I don’t see a purpose in it. That’s
my main problem with it,” he said.
“I think nobody likes DPS, so I
think it’s going to bother people
having them go on the rounds ...
And nobody likes the RAs that go
on rounds either, because they’re
enforcing rules.”
DPS Assistant Director Tom
Hicks said the program will be
evaluated at the end of the year to
determine its effectiveness.
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