Art by Peau Porotesano
The supposed incompetencies of the Department of Public Safety are a running joke on campus. Basically, all they seem to be good for — from the perspective of many students — is to help you jump your car, unlock your room door, give you rides when you break your leg and hand out parking citations. The assumption seems to be that if you were ever in any real danger, DPS would be useless.
This sentiment goes beyond making snarky comments to friends, and it’s certainly not anything new to the student body. Students have even gone out of their way to poke fun at DPS’ presumed inadequacies, creating videos such as “DPS PSA Spoof,” posted on YouTube in February 2013, and “The DPS Rap,” posted on Youtube in May 2011. Even the famous video, “S— Pepperdine Girls Say,” posted in February 2012, mentions getting caught by DPS.
In reality, DPS plays a central role in maintaining order and security on campus. Even though it can be tempting to roll your eyes at how easy it would be for a stranger to sneak onto campus as you smile and wave to the officer at the guard booth, the sense of safety that the presence of an on-campus security force provides is invaluable.
When there are real medical emergencies or physical threats on campus, it is reassuring to know that there is someone to help who only has to drive from the CCB, as opposed to the nine miles (15 minutes) from the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station.
On the flip side of the coin, when DPS officers do their jobs, students tend to complain that DPS is being too strict. It seems to be a lose-lose for DPS in many cases. If they respond to a noise complaint, for example, they get a bad rap from the student they cite. If they don’t respond quickly enough, the student who called in the complaint vents to their roommates about DPS’ ineptitude.
“From an officer’s perspective it is generally a good relationship when we provided services to individual students,” former DPS Officer Joel Denning wrote in an email. “It is also a very easy group to become very confrontational with, because we collect information about code of conduct violations, and everybody has a friend that has a story of a DPS officer being unnecessarily strict. The fact of the matter is most of us are simply trying to do our job and make sure people are safe.”
Ultimately, the basic duty of a DPS officer is to serve the Pepperdine community through ensuring a safe and secure environment for students, faculty, staff and visitors when they are on campus, Deputy Director of DPS Dawn Emrich wrote in an email.
“Officers interact with hundreds of students, faculty and staff during the course of their time on duty each day,” Emrich wrote. “Some interactions are brief, like a wave from the booth, and some are more involved, such as being the first on [the] scene to a critical medical incident. Those scenarios, and everything in between, forge meaningful connections between the greater Pepperdine community and the Department of Public Safety.”
Of course, that’s not to say that DPS is flawless either. Emrich recognized that the way in which an officer interacts with a student, employee or visitor significantly impacts how that person will view DPS as a whole.
Still, Emrich wrote, “Each member of our team is committed to maintaining a safe and secure environment for all students, employees and visitors while respecting the dignity of each. This is accomplished by doing many things to serve the community, including enforcing policy.”
While friendly contention with DPS isn’t necessarily harmful (and may even keep them accountable to a certain extent), it’s also important to remember that we don’t always know what the policies that guide the actions and decisions of an organization are.
The contribution of DPS to Pepperdine’s campus is important, and while there is always room for improvement in any human institution, DPS presence is probably more significant than many realize. Pepperdine would be a very different campus if DPS was removed entirely.
It’s completely understandable why one would find corny Pepperdine spoof videos funny, and it is vital for the student body to remain observant and keep DPS accountable. But it is also valuable to respect the individual administrative organizations, including DPS, that operate behind the scenes to make our college experience and education possible.
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