I wonder if the Department of Residence secretly doesn’t want anyone to live in the dorms anymore. Between locking every entrance 24 hours a day and now having the ISU Police patrol them to keep everyone safe from themselves and each other, the residence halls have come closer to penal institutions rather than dormitories.

Yet they wonder why enrollment in on-campus housing is going down and droves of people are moving to all these new apartment complexes.

Just what kind of positive relationship with the students are the ISU Police going to create by wandering the halls trying to issue underage drinking citations?

The officer quoted in last Friday’s Daily stated that as being a primary reason for them to be there. It sounds to me just like another case of the ISU Police looking for a way to get at the students to rack up their citation quotas.

It’s a sweet deal for them to start with, since they know anything that they state is to protect your personal safety will be blindly accepted. Because, as we all know, the sense of security and feeling of being safe is far more important than being able to live without being watched over like little children by the authorities, right?

A few students from the dorms said that they like the idea and feel safer with a cop in the building. I wonder if these people ever plan on moving out of the dorms, or perhaps when they do, will they just petition their landlord or city councilman to have a cop in their apartment or on their block at all times to watch out for them?

I’m sorry, but I thought when you came to college it was time to stop having your hand held and time to start learning how to live on your own.

Look, you have an RA or CA, your floor mates and an established student security program, and if things get too hot for them, they call the police.

If your RA/CA and student security actually do their job, you should be pretty safe. What is a police presence going to be able to do that student security can’t, other than issue official tickets for things on the spot, which makes me wonder what their main motivation is for being there.

You can never have 100 percent safe living conditions; however, you can have a relatively safe place to live without living in a police state. We could make a lot of rules that would guarantee security for dorm residents, but they are not implemented because they would make dorm life not even worth it.

I am well aware that we need rules and procedures in place to deter and prevent the bad things that happen on college campuses like vandalism, thievery, sexual assault, etc.

However, having cops patrolling the dorms is an unnecessary step in the wrong direction.

Michael Rich

Junior

Industrial Technology