Amidst the many freshmen and resident assistants, a different kind of student can be found within the residence halls at IU.
Starting last week, part-time officers with the IU Police Department began regular residence hall patrols. The patrols are designed to cut down on incidents occurring within residence halls while building community relationships between officers and students.
During weeknight and weekend shifts, part-time officers are in each residence hall on campus. These officers, who are typically IU students themselves, have all gone through police cadet training and are armed the same as full-time officers.
“These officers are peers,” said IUPD Lt. Andy Stephenson, who organizes the program. “They’re student aides. They are actually students themselves, so they have a little bit better opportunity, more access to build those trusting relationships. We want the students to see the police department as a resource.”
The part-time officers’ shifts range from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 6:30 to 11:30 p.m. Thursdays and 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays, Stephenson said.
IUPD also has nine part-time officers, called live-ins, that live in residence halls and work closely with IU’s Residential Programming and Services staff. While their shifts mirror those of the part-time officers working in the residence halls, the live-in officers may also respond to minor incidents, such as noise complaints, throughout the day.
Part-time officers living both in and outside of residence halls have gone through additional training to prepare for residence hall shifts, typically learning about safety and diversity. Live-ins moved in a week earlier than students arriving for fall semester to acquaint themselves with resident hall staffs and attend regular meetings as “an extension of the staff.”
One part-time officer lives in Ashton, Eigenmann, Forest, Foster, Read, Teter and Wright residence halls, and two other officers live in Tulip Tree Apartments.
Live-in officers have access to every building, including maintenance rooms, alarm panels and rooftops, however they cannot enter individual dorm rooms.
“The approach is if we see something out of the ordinary, maybe we’ll talk to them about it first,” live-in officer Michael Anderson said. “I’m sure for most of the live-in officers, they don’t want to rush to take action. If they see something, like somebody’s being loud, as long as everybody’s being safe, we’re usually fine with it. If we see that there’s any kind of danger to anybody, that’s when somebody will step in.”
Anderson is a senior returning as a live-in officer for his second year in Tulip Tree Apartments. Studying finance and technology, Anderson said he doesn’t plan on doing anything law enforcement-related after college.
“It’s just a wonderful program,” Anderson said. “I know the people that I recruited with at my company, they love the fact that I was a police officer. It’s definitely not a typical job on campus.”
The program, which lasts throughout the fall and spring semesters of school, began after a successful test project in McNutt Residence Hall about 15 years ago.
“That year, the incident rate at McNutt went down about 40 percent,” Stephenson said. “So we expanded it to the other dormitories, and we’ve been doing it ever since.”
Anderson said as a part-time officer he mostly responds to alcohol- and marijuana-related incidents. For more serious offenses, part-time officers can call for full-time officer assistance.
“The good thing of working on a campus like this is we don’t have back-up very far away,” Anderson said. “They’re always nearby. We’ve got a full-time officer coming into almost every call, as long as they’re available, but we as part-time officers are certainly equipped to handle those situations that aren’t typical for us.”
Anderson said one of his greatest learning experiences in the program has been finding balance between his identity as both a student and a police officer.
“We still want to go to hang out with our friends,” Anderson said. “We still want to go out to the bars occasionally. We still want to interact with our friends without them thinking we’re going to get them in trouble or something. We’re normal people.”
Anderson said he wants those unfamiliar with IUPD to understand why the officers are in residence halls.
“Hopefully they just understand why we’re there and why we’re not there,” Anderson said. “We’re not there to seek out issues. We’re there to make sure it’s a safe environment.”
