Campus police prove to be more than many think

The role of the Oklahoma Christian University campus police might seem ambiguous to some people. Are they limited to giving parking tickets and letting students into their dorm? What differentiates the campus police from other police?

According to Sergeant Robert Rork, the campus police are, for the most part, regular policemen that you see everyday.

“I’m just an average guy trying to do an exceptional job,” Rork said.

Since most students don’t interact with the campus police all the time, and don’t see behind the scenes, they acquire many misconceptions about them.

“The first thing I think is seeing them sitting in various places around campus, waiting for someone to not stop at a stop sign, or something like that… or waiting to give someone a parking ticket,” senior Holly Hodge said. “But I do know that they’re also helpful in that people have told me that if you don’t want to walk across campus in the dark, they’ll come get you and walk with you.”

It is true campus police do a lot of servicing like lock up buildings, let students into their apartment or dorm and provide students with a sense of security at night. This is part of how they are a little different than standard city police officers. They have to be approachable in order to better serve students.

“We try to be a service-first police,” Rork said.

This is not to say that campus police can’t or don’t deal with serious issues. They are real police who deal with real issues.

“I was in the caf and some guy asks me ‘are you the real police?’ and I was like, ‘no, we’re just skit police,’” Rork said.

Sergeant Rork said that he is convinced every single one of the campus police could go out and do what the city police do, but the city police might not be able to do what the campus police do. This is because their job takes approachability.

“There [are] a lot of misconceptions about the campus police. It takes a certain finesse to do what we do,” Rork said.

Because the campus police are around campus all the time, they get to know students on a first-name basis. As is the case with Trevor Crismore, a student at Oklahoma Christian who is in the application process of becoming a police officer.

“I definitely have a positive view of [the campus police],” Crismore said. “They’re more like mentors for me, especially Sergeant Rork.”

Whenever Crismore has a question about one of the tests he has to take during the application process, he can talk to one of the campus police officers.

Another thing that differentiates the campus police is that they are more of a proactive force than the city police. They train for many, many scenarios that might happen and are ready for action whenever any danger comes knocking. This is unlike the city police who are trained to wait a few minutes for backup and other things.

“We train to where we’re not going to wait five minutes,” Rork said.

Training and being ready for anything is a big part of being a campus police officer. Rork said that sometimes they do air soft training at night.

“We get paid for what we might do, not what we actually do,” Rork said. “We don’t have stuff happen a lot, but what if it did?”

While the campus has had its fair share of mishaps and burglaries, Rork said there have only been two major incidents during the years he has worked for the school.

“As Christians we hope for the best, but we also want to prepare for the worst,” Rork said. “This is a Christian campus, but you can’t be naive.”

One reason Oklahoma Christian campus is relatively crime-free is because there is such a police presence on campus. Sergeant Rork said that because the campus police are always out driving around, it probably discourages burglars and other criminals from coming on campus and causing trouble.

One misconception is that campus police enforce campus policies like dress code. While the campus police are aware of many policies, they are more interested in upholding law than making sure everyone on the Eagle Trail has shorts that are fingertip length, or that no one is sagging their pants.

“We’re not the pants-sagging police,” Rork said.

Campus police are much like regular policeman. The only real difference is that they are proactive and actually care about the students on campus.

“I think there’s definitely a jaded view of the police here that I don’t think they deserve,” Crismore said. “They want the students here to be comfortable, happy and safe.”

 

Sarah Redding is a senior at Oklahoma Christian University and Copy Editor of  the Talon.