FAQ

Safety is responsible for the reasonable safety and security of students, faculty, staff and guests on campus. We are responsible for managing risk. We respond to all emergencies reported or discovered on campus. We do this by proactively patrolling the campus and responding to calls for service as needed. Much of what safety does is service related and not connected to enforcement.

Officers transport students sick or otherwise injured to Health Services. Officers provide walking or driving escorts when Safewalk is not in service. Officers manage the campus parking program to maintain vehicular access to campus roadways. We also provide security for special events or guest speakers or artists on campus. We spend a large portion of our time securing buildings and monitoring fire, intrusion and detection systems in all buildings. We also play an important part in building inspections for maintenance of life safety systems such as sprinklers, smoke detectors, and fire extinguishers. We conduct biannual fire drills in all residence halls.

Security Escort is a student walking vehicle escort program managed by Safety. We hire students to transport or walk students from various on campus locations. These escorts are designed for students who do not feel safe walking alone at times on campus. Students are available from 6pm to 2am every day and Safety handles the transports and escorts after the students are off duty. Dialing “0 ” on campus can get you to Security Escort and 587-6777 can get you to them from your cell phone.

Student health and safety are of primary concern at Denison University. As such, in cases of intoxication and/or alcohol poisoning, individuals are encouraged to seek medical assistance for themselves or others. If a student seeks medical attention due to his/her level of intoxication or another person seeks medical attention for that student, the Office of Student Conduct and Campus Values will not pursue conduct sanctions against that student for violations of the Student Code of Conduct that specifically relate to alcohol and its use.

Additionally, students who assist in obtaining medical attention for other individuals who are intoxicated will not receive conduct sanctions for violations of alcohol policies of the Student Code of Conduct. Safety reports how the person seeking Medical Amnesty was discovered or how they requested assistance. Safety does not decide who receives amnesty; they only provide proof that the student made the request for amnesty.

Safety and other officials have a right to enter your room at any time. However, as practice we do not enter rooms just because we can. In most cases, Safety will ask to be invited or ask for a resident to come out in the hallway. We normally do not enter rooms unless we have a good reason to do so. If there is a health and safety reason for entering a room we will do so without your consent. If we have asked for a resident to speak with and no resident has identified themselves to us we will enter the room in order to clear out the non-residents.

We often end up in rooms because we have not been able to speak with the residents or have not been able to stop whatever behavior we are there for from continuing. The next step is to ask all non-residents to leave the premise.

Yes you can. But bear in mind that if you refuse to do what Safety tells you to do and the request is lawful and reasonable you might have to speak with the local police. Safety alone cannot compel anybody to do anything. We don’t have the tools to force anybody to do anything so we expect students to cooperate fully. For example, all students are required to identify themselves when requested by a university official. This means that you should have some form of ID on you otherwise you could be detained until we can identify you.

Yes it can. In cases where this has happened we have traced a particular behavior from a specific party. For example, if we find an intoxicated, underage person who has to be transported to the hospital for over-intoxication and they claim they were in attendance at your party it is likely your party will be broken up because the specific behavior of providing alcohol to minors needs to be stopped and that seems to be the only for that behavior to be stopped immediately.

Safety calls GPD for the following reasons:

• If we have a person who had no Denison affiliation and they are not accompanied by a host and they have violated the law we might call GPD to handle the incident. The reason we do this is we exercise no control over people unaffiliated with the college.
• If we are unable to identify the person we are dealing with. GPD can assist in identifying people and can manage non-student visitors who have violated the law better than we can.
• If anyone is threatened with bodily harm we refer cases to GPD to investigate.
• When we come upon anyone driving while intoxicated we refer them to GPD.
• Any time someone is failing to cooperate or do what we are requesting them to do.
• Whenever a crime has been reported to us and the victim wants the police contacted.

This is an interesting question. There are two kinds of Safety staff. We have monitors and officers. The monitors are assigned to the residential areas of campus and work between the hours of 8pm and 4am. They work on foot in all the residence halls. These are the staff students are most likely to see. So this means that the majority of staff work during the times where students are most active, and have the least amount of structured activity.

All campus safety departments deploy most of their staff during the times in which most of the activities that are problematic take place. I think the fact that we have staff assigned to specific residential areas is why students believe security is always around. So to answer the question, why is security always around it is mainly because we need to be available to handle incidents that arise during the busy times of the night and early morning hours. It does not make good sense to have staff working when students are in classes or are asleep.

If you feel that you were not treated with respect or the incident was not handled well please make a complaint with the Director of Safety. His office is located in the entry level of the parking garage. There is a written complaint protocol for these complaints that will be followed to help these incidents to be handled better and/or to explain why an incident was handled the way in which it was handled. The first step is to bring the incident to the attention of the Director. Bear in mind a complaint has no bearing on conduct or law enforcement action as a result of the incident.

In conclusion, Safety is really not interested in prying in the lives of students. However, we need to minimize risk. In order to do so we have to investigate incidents brought to our attention. The following are the ways in which students can avoid incidents involving Safety at your gathering.

1. When hosting a gathering make sure you know ahead of time how many people can safely be in your space. If your party ends up spilling out of your space it will draw the attention of Security staff.
2. Before your event, plan ahead. Make sure you know who you expect to attend your party and invite only those people you want at your party. Open invitation parties end up being much larger than you can plan for or have room for and end up drawing Security attention.
3. Speak with your neighbors to make sure they know how to contact you during your event if there are problems. They are less likely to call Safety if your event gets out of hand if they can call you first to manage it.
4. Assign a resident to be the spokesperson for the party who will assist Security in managing the party if it needs to be managed or broken up.
5. Cooperate fully with Safety staff if they respond to your gathering. To do anything less will not help your situation.
6. If you feel that you were not treated properly or the procedure was not handled the way it should have, please contact the Director of Safety to make a complaint.