I wear a badge, I have a title, heck, I even have the power to remove you from the premises. My weapons are my pen and my phone and I use them like as an extra limb from my seat of power. I am a desk assistant, student by day and amateur security guard by night. I say amateur because I have neither real power nor experience. No pen can stop a gunman and no phone will seal a building tight against break-ins. My training was minimal and my prior experience nil. What follows is what I have learned about security and uncertainly while protecting Bohn Hall and how an exciting and dangerous job became, well, just a job.
First, a job titled,"Desk assistant" is really a security job? This may be the first and the last time the words security guard and assistant are featured in the same sentence together. Reading the description of the desk assistant's duties is like reading a manual about how to work a temp office job. Answer phone calls, check. Leave messages and send messages for superiors, check. File paperwork, keep an orderly space and having the privilege of experiencing inter office politics first hand are more perks of the job. Except for the fact that there is a panic button behind this office desk, it's just an office job.
However the Bohn hall front desk does have a panic button. It happens to be a little white lever built into the side of the desk. Pull it and the Montclair State police force will send everything it's got.
The Desk Assistant position was and is not advertised as a security job. The filers and applications strewn all over the resident halls promise gainful employment and the respect of your peers. A desk assistant's job will be fun and simple. No danger here. A more misleading advertisement has not been seen before or since. The miracle tonics of the 19th century have nothing on the D.A filers.
When I signed up for the job I had no idea that a college check- in-desk would have a panic button (how could I, "fun fun fun behind the desk" said the filer). The appearance of drunken frat boys at 4 a.m usually doesn't constitute an emergency does it? What I had signed up for? Was the desk a secret safe used to store the universities supply of gold? What was I guarding?!
When the answer came to me I realized that I had been duped. I was not sitting behind a massive desk for the purpose of guarding precious metals as I had speculated. I was not guarding an "it" but a "them". I was guarding the residents of the building. That button was the last line of defense in a worst case scenario situation. I was cannon fodder! When an attacker came in, I would have just enough time to pull the lever before I would be shot to death. Great.
Before I continue further with my tale, reader, I understand that some exposition is needed before this paper continues. In May of 2007 I applied for the position of "Bohn Hall D.A". At the time all I knew about these "D.A's" is that they demanded that I show them my identification every time I walked into my building. They sat behind a desk goofing off and someone was always there to pester me. Seeing those oh so misleading filers plastered to every flat surface turned the wheel in my head;"Hey I like money, I can be annoying and I hate sleep so this must be the job for me" One quick interview and I was all set up. I even received better housing as a bonus. In my mind I had just hit the jackpot of all campus jobs.
My honeymoon period with my new job ended just about the time I realized that I had to move back on to campus a week early to attend a week long training session. Irritated that my summer vacation from teachers and tests had been cut short I arrived on August 21 to learn how to swipe a plastic card. Or so I thought that what I would be learning. I arrived a half an hour late to my first training session expecting a seminar on how to swipe a plastic card with a magnetic strip. I was not prepared for what followed.
As I sat in a room with a hundred other students, listening to my new boss talk about seriousness of the D.A position, it dawned on me that my new job might not be what I thought. Until that moment I had no idea that I had been entrusted with the responsibility of keeping an armed gunmen out of a college dorm. That I was to be the first line of defense against a gun toting crazy and I would be without the protection a bullet proof vest. I thought, "How much are they paying me again? Not enough for this."
The presentation tried to smooth over that little fact but it was too late. As the presentation shifted to the more mundane aspects of a D.A's duties I could only imagine how I would respond to the appearance of a gun wielding maniac. Would I play it cool and try to talk them down? Would I distract them as a resident snuck behind them in an attempt to overpower them? What if it was a group of armed gunmen? What then?
I brushed off my concerns with the thought that "these people are professionals, they've got it all planed out". This was back when I still trusted that those in authority had at least some answers. However I and my co-workers would soon find out that our trust was misplaced.
When our group of Bohn hall D.A's gathered in the main lobby of Bohn for a tour of the desk we were in for a rude awaking. We did have a switch that would prevent the automatic doors from opening; however it was not at all hard to force them open. We did have a panic button but we were informed that the police would call to check that if was a real emergency when it was pulled. Just the perfect tip off to the armed intruder that the police would be on the way so they could become enraged and cut their losses by shooting the D.A's right in front of them. All of this was very reassuring.
The next day when the veteran D.A's spoke about their experiences I was not comforted. The more they spoke about unruly residents picking D.A's as their targets the more I felt as if I was in the line of fire. The best we could do to protect ourselves and other residents was call police and hope they arrived fast. Great.
Most security guards even rent –a-cops; have some type of defense, handcuffs or even a walky talky to call for back-up. Sometimes even pepper spray. We had nothing. Nothing except a phone and even if I threw that phone as hard as I could, I doubt I could knock anyone out with it. I was defenseless and unprepared for the worst. What could I do? The answer was simple. Wait it out. The more time I spent behind the desk the less I thought of these things. I was able to get over uncertainty of my position rather quickly. I attribute this acceptance to the other experiences of my life. Before my time as a D.A I was a lifeguard. I'd spent over 50 hours during the past five years training on how to rescue drowning swimmers, perform C.P.R and recognize the signs of a heart attack. I had been well trained. Even so, my first day as a lifeguard was fraught with worry about how I would perform a rescue. Would I freeze? Would I forget a vital step or blotch the C.P.R.? What if I drifted off and allowed a small child to drown? Luckily nothing happened that day. In fact in five years as a lifeguard I have never had to perform C.P.R or call the paramedics once. I fell into a routine of complacency where the worst always happened "somewhere else" I was able to relate this past experience to my new position to fight my panic and allay my own fears. I thought that the "worst" always happened somewhere else and nothing terrible could happen at my University. This thought comforted me and I clung to it.
Over the past six months as a D.A I became complacent. I no longer asked to see everyone's I.D. card. I let non residents into the building, even when they gave lame excuses. I looked the other way when I heard about the awesome party on the 5th floor. Ideally I am supposed to check every guest's name against a list of names of people who are not allowed into the building. I have not checked that list once. My idea of what being a security guard would be was shattered. I was not really protecting anyone nor did I have any real power to perform my duties. The more I worked behind the desk the more I realized how useless my job was. The D.A position does serve a purpose as a first line of defense, however it's a line easily crossed without much trouble. Half of the fire escape doors in Bohn Hall do not lock properly. Residents and other people sneak into and out of the building all day long with little effort. The best I could do was call the R.A and hope that they solved everything when something happened. I was and am powerless to physically restrain people from entering the building. When a group of students began a fight outside of the dorm the best I could do was threaten to call the cops. I could not even lock the doors to prevent the fight from spilling over into the residence hall. What use was I?
It took the bored scribbilings of a disgruntled teenager to finally make me realize what my purpose behind the desk was. Early in April a message about shooting up the campus on April tenth was discovered on a desk in an academic building in the university. Montclair state responded by hiring over 100 out of area police officers, police snipers and even set up check points at all entrances on that day to protect the students. However most students knew that if a gunman wanted to "shoot up" a ****oom, it could still happen. All of the extra police force on campus could not prevent a student from carrying a small pistol into a ****oom. No dorm or bag checks were performed. All the police in the world cannot stop a bullet from traveling ten feet inside a small ****oom and everyone with a human brain understands that fact.
However I did seen news trucks everywhere. While the police where standing around laughing and checking out the fine women of Montclair state, the news of how Montclair responded to the threat was broadcast live all over New Jersey. Montclair State University received the most publicly in its entire history that day. It was a P.R stunt. The police were there to protect the campus; however the whole exercise was also a show for the television cameras. Montclair University had a chance e to show the nation that it would not let its students go unprotected nor would it be at the whim of every teenager with a pencil and an attitude problem. Montclair State had its day to be a hero. With the whole world watching and it seized that opportunity "carpe diem" ****
I realized that day that my sitting behind the desk was also a show of sorts. For the administration they could point to us and show parents that they cared about safety. For the residents of Bohn it was a show that at all times someone was always on guard. That no matter what, seven days a week, 24 hours a day at least two people would be there keeping watch over you the resident. My job did serve a purpose but the reality was that I had far less power to perform my official duties than I needed. I realized that my position was more symbolic than anything else.
I know that the panic button behind my desk is a real defense. Those snipers on top of the buildings on campus had rifles loaded with live ammo. My job does serve a real purpose but life itself is too full of the unknown for it to be a perfect science. Every time you step into your car you could think about the tens of thousands of roadway fatalities that occur every year. Or you could just turn it on and go. I could check the list of people not allowed into the building every time and swipe everyone's I.D. card all the time, but the reality is that I cannot. Checking the list every time would require at least a minute and when there are 10 people waiting to be signed in it's hard to do. It's an ideal that never happens. If I see someone everyday who I know lives in the building will I waste their and my time stopping them every time they walk outside to smoke? Probably not. The fact is that nothing is perfect and not everyone does the right thing all the time.
After the fact of a major catastrophe, everyone always asks the same question again and again: "What went wrong?" It's an important question to ask. Sometimes what went wrong could have been prevented. President Bush could have prepared better for Hurricane Katrina and sent the National Guard in right away. It is true that the New York City police and fire departments could not communicate because of faulty radios. However, something always goes wrong. What that wrong "is" and will always be is human error. People get lazy; they sleep on the job or freeze when something goes wrong. I have experienced how this happens slowly over time firsthand. Nothing is as safe as it seems. Sometimes, nothing can be done to prevent the worst.
Luckily the world is not as dangerous a place as Fox News presents it to be. No school shooting has happened on campus. That gunman has not walked into Bohn Hall and no one has ever threatened me behind the desk. My security job has become just like any other job. I think more about my attractive co-workers than how to execute proper fire alarm procedure. I'm not a machine. Instead I am just a man wearing a name tag behind a wooden desk that any athletic person could easily leap over. What I have learned and experienced as a security job is how the day in day out grind of daily life prevents perfect security in the world. I understand how being a police officer could become just another job when the most action you've seen in months is writing two speeding tickets in one day. Protecting lives and being in the line of fire is just another day on the job for me. I do not do my job perfectly yet I try. Hopefully my job is the kind of job that will be done by robots soon so no human error can occur. Then everyone will benefit. Until then, I'm just a showpiece behind a large desk, hoping for the best.
So what do my blog readers think? F paper or E paper? Whatever grade I get, this deserves to go down in history for its "job done by robots" sentence. The damn thing is 2,604 words long and it took me hours to write. Ugh. I better get a good grade lol. Anyone who reads thing whole thing gets an A in my book.
Log in to comment