In an effort to strengthen its relationship with students, the Office of Public Safety has opened its first satellite office in the heart of the campus. The branch location on the second floor of the Campus Center started as a student project, and aims to increase engagement and understanding among professional staff members and students.
“Having a satellite office has become a best practice at a lot of institutions,” said Andrew Kosinuk, crime prevention and community events liaison for the Office of Public Safety. “We like the idea of having more points of service on the campus where people can interact with their public safety staff.”
The satellite office started as an idea developed by the Student Engagement Workgroup for Advancing Public Safety Diversity, Inclusions and Engagement Goals. Prior to graduating last May, Elijah Breton assisted with writing the proposal to submit to the senior administration.
“Policing tends to work better when the officers know the people that they’re governing and have relationships with,” said Luca Cipolla ’18. “And this is a great opportunity for the staff to establish those relationships.”
The current hours of operation for the satellite office are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.–2 p.m., with opportunities to expand to more hours and days in the future. It will have a student staff member and a professional staff member present at any given time.
“There will be mainly patrol officers in the space, but you’ll also see our parking services staff, our top administrators, and our environmental health and safety team,” said Kosinuk. “Our long term vision is that anything you can do at the main public safety office on Farm Pond Road you can do at the satellite office.”
Terri Stewart even went so far as to say that the satellite office is the culmination of all of her work since she started as the director of the Office of Public Safety nine years ago. Stewart’s final day on the job coincided with the opening day of the branch location.
“This is probably the best thing that’s going to happen for public safety in regard to relationships and partnership building, collaboration and information sharing on campus, “ said Stewart. “We are in the direct path of the people that we serve and the team is really excited about it.”