Ball State

» security system

By China at 9:13 PM

My job here on campus for the summer is a pretty interesting training experience for the real work in the fall. I work for the university police and work as an aid to the full-time police force we have on campus. I began about a month ago and now have received all of my formal training. Now I split my time up between working a beat every other night on campus, and monitoring the surveillance cameras. Our university has a really top notch security system and a pretty wide network of security cameras. So when I am out on the beat I am being watched by someone else in the booth as I pass from screen to screen . I basically am there to pick out anything that the cameras cannot see. Right now the job is pretty dull because most of the students have left for the summer. The ones that are left all live off campus so they spend very little time on campus and almost none at night. My job till the fall is to watch for any intruders and make sure no one is destroying property or stealing anything from campus. We all also had to be trained in terrorism threats. So there are a wide list of things that may look suspicious which I have to keep my eyes out for which range from strangely parked cars and bags left in buildings. During the summer it would be much easier for me to spot something like this, but during the fall and spring everything is going to be much more difficult. I am really studying up on everything while I am not working so that I am fully prepared for the fall. When all of the students come back I have heard that our job becomes like that of a band-aid on a broken bone. There are always problems going on around campus with forty-thousand people around and there are only a handful of us making sure everything works smoothly. I really like it though and I am excited for when they come back and I get to actually handle some real world experiences and problem solving situations. For now my job is basically surveillance security and taking long walks in the dark every other night. All I have to do now is just keep awake at night and not miss anything too important before the fall comes and I really get put to the test.