2008 Woodie Awards
Magic of Campus Safety
Jason Holloway and Ellyn Weston
Issue date: 1/14/08 Section: Opinion
Campus Safety. What do you think of when you hear these two words? I bet you have at least ten different answers by the time you finish this sentence. Regardless of how many creative things you can imagine Campus Safety and Security doing with your last parking ticket, I would be willing to bet that "magician" is not a profession you would associate with our security officers.
Magicians the officers of Campus Safety and Security are, I assure you. Who else, but these men in black, can find parking spaces where there are seemingly none? Just before finals week last semester, I was coming up the stairs from the first floor of the Science Center (the ones behind the Lecture Wing) and had the misfortune of being confronted with a Campus Safety and Security vehicle. The SUV was glorious with all of its lights blazing, filling the twilight sky as the last of the sun's rays slid behind the horizon of trees.
I thought that there must have been some (huge) emergency to cause the officer to practice his "magic" and create a parking space where anyone else would get ticketed for parking. What emergency heralded such a drastic measure? A couch had been moved about thirty feet. A pair of enterprising students had moved a loveseat from the COSI Lounge into classroom 340 for their last Modern Physics class. The couch was "missing" for about thirty minutes total, which was more than enough time for the officer to conjure up more of his magic and begin an investigation. The course of this investigation would take our hapless hero all over the Science Center, everywhere except for room 340, of course. The officer demonstrated his knack for questioning likely suspects by going to the Chemical Stockroom (on the second floor), slamming his hands on the counter, and demanding, "Have you seen a couch go by?" Overcome by this brilliant display, the student worker voiced his first thought, "Are you [expletive] nuts?"
Fortunately, the vagrants who had maliciously relocated the loveseat returned it to its original position thirty feet away. Just as the hoodlums were adjusting the corners of the loveseat to align with the far corners of the coffee table in the COSI Lounge, the officer returned to the scene of the crime, having given up hope of locating the couch on the lower floors. The vagrants were released on the condition that they promise to never move furniture to a nearby location again.
While Campus Safety and Security may never win national accolades for their detective prowess, good students of Clarkson don't despair, for our proud officers in black will still be able to find those magic parking spaces.
Magicians the officers of Campus Safety and Security are, I assure you. Who else, but these men in black, can find parking spaces where there are seemingly none? Just before finals week last semester, I was coming up the stairs from the first floor of the Science Center (the ones behind the Lecture Wing) and had the misfortune of being confronted with a Campus Safety and Security vehicle. The SUV was glorious with all of its lights blazing, filling the twilight sky as the last of the sun's rays slid behind the horizon of trees.
I thought that there must have been some (huge) emergency to cause the officer to practice his "magic" and create a parking space where anyone else would get ticketed for parking. What emergency heralded such a drastic measure? A couch had been moved about thirty feet. A pair of enterprising students had moved a loveseat from the COSI Lounge into classroom 340 for their last Modern Physics class. The couch was "missing" for about thirty minutes total, which was more than enough time for the officer to conjure up more of his magic and begin an investigation. The course of this investigation would take our hapless hero all over the Science Center, everywhere except for room 340, of course. The officer demonstrated his knack for questioning likely suspects by going to the Chemical Stockroom (on the second floor), slamming his hands on the counter, and demanding, "Have you seen a couch go by?" Overcome by this brilliant display, the student worker voiced his first thought, "Are you [expletive] nuts?"
Fortunately, the vagrants who had maliciously relocated the loveseat returned it to its original position thirty feet away. Just as the hoodlums were adjusting the corners of the loveseat to align with the far corners of the coffee table in the COSI Lounge, the officer returned to the scene of the crime, having given up hope of locating the couch on the lower floors. The vagrants were released on the condition that they promise to never move furniture to a nearby location again.
While Campus Safety and Security may never win national accolades for their detective prowess, good students of Clarkson don't despair, for our proud officers in black will still be able to find those magic parking spaces.
Be the first to comment on this story