At 10 p.m. Wednesday, McCormick junior Andrew Dorn sat behind the security monitor’s desk at the entrance of Bobb Hall, flipping through a book of sheet music.
While a friend strummed Dorn’s guitar, Dorn glanced at the door. Five people had signed in since the start of his shift two hours ago. During the next hour, 73 people walked through those doors, and it was Dorn’s job to sort the residents from the visitors.
With concerns about campus safety growing, security monitors are playing an increasingly important role on campus. University officials said last year’s changes to the security monitor program are still being implemented, but some students pointed out flaws.
“The security monitors at my dorm never ask anybody (to sign in),” said Dan Broadwell, a Weinberg sophomore who lives at Foster-Walker Complex. “It’s a work-study job and they really don’t care that much.”
Although Communication junior Marissa Del Campo said Elder Hall monitors always ask for her WildCARD whenever she visits the building, she said other monitors aren’t as vigilant.
Virginia Koch, assistant director of University Residential Life, said while the security monitor program isn’t perfect, improved training materials and enthusiastic supervisors have contributed to the program’s improvement this year.
“We’re strongly encouraging all the monitors to check everybody’s IDs,” said McCormick senior Dan Shrey, the security monitor coordinator. This policy has been enforced more this year than in prior years, he said.
But not all monitors take their jobs seriously. Koch said the program struggled last year with students skipping work.
“For some reason people that would take these jobs would consider their job a low priority,” she said.
To become a security monitor, she said, students need “to be willing to show up.” In a 90-minute training session this quarter, supervisors presented “role play scenarios” that taught monitors how to handle confrontations. The University Police also attended the sessions to discuss personal safety issues, Koch added.
Despite the revamped training system, former security monitor Vicki Cook, a Weinberg senior, said NU’s security system “is not a system — it’s a Band-Aid.”
“The security monitor system is something they have so they can say they have it,” she said. “How effective it is depends on the person that happens to be working.”
The monitors are there for only four hours on weeknights and seven hours on weekends, she said, making buildings open for anyone the majority of the time. A staff of 140 security monitors guards the doors at 20 buildings from 8 p.m. to midnight on weeknights and 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. on the weekends.
But Shrey said the university is doing its best with a restricted budget and a limited work force.
A 24-hour monitor is “the ideal program,” he said, but “we don’t have the fundamentals to do that.”
Monitors start at a salary of $6.45 per hour and receive a five-cent raise each quarter, with the possibility of a 50-cent raise the next academic year.
Just as monitors need to sign in visitors, students also need to cooperate, said Weinberg senior Brian Dugal, the security monitor supervisor for Bobb and McCulloch halls.
“It only takes a matter of minutes to help out and show your ID, but some people are cocky,” he said. “Things would go a lot smoother if people had their WildCARD with them at all times.”
