Campus Security
| Campus Security | |
| Type | Campus safety office, non-academic |
|---|---|
| Institution | Oakridge College |
| Reports to | Dean of Student Affairs |
| Authority | College staff, not sworn officers |
| Works with | Hartwell County Sheriff's Department |
| Category | Campus & Institutes |
Proposed, not yet ratified.
Overview
Campus Security is the office responsible for safety, order, and emergency response on Oakridge College grounds. It keeps the campus usable: it answers calls from faculty and students, responds to incidents, secures buildings, and stays with a situation until it is resolved or until county responders arrive.
Campus Security officers are college employees, not sworn law enforcement. They hold no police powers. They do not arrest, they do not investigate crimes, and they do not carry firearms. When a matter is criminal, they secure the scene and call the Hartwell County Sheriff's Department, which holds jurisdiction over the campus as it does over the rest of the county.
That division is the point. Oakridge handles its own order; Hartwell County handles crime.
What Campus Security does
- Responds to calls from faculty, staff, and students
- Attends incidents in classrooms, halls, residences, and outdoor spaces
- Asks a person to leave a building or an event, and stays until they do
- Separates people and holds a situation steady until it can be handled properly
- Escorts a student, faculty member, or visitor who does not feel safe
- Secures and unlocks college buildings and specialized spaces
- Calls emergency services and directs responders when they arrive
- Supports events that expect a crowd, a public audience, or a known risk
- Writes an incident record and passes it to the appropriate college authority
What Campus Security does not do
- Arrest, detain beyond the moment, or take anyone into custody
- Investigate a crime, take a criminal statement, or collect evidence
- Carry firearms
- Decide academic matters, grades, or coursework disputes
- Impose academic or disciplinary sanctions, which belong to the college's own process
- Act as counselors, medical providers, or student advisers
An officer who arrives at something criminal has one job: keep people safe and get the deputies there.
Working with the Sheriff's Department
The campus sits inside Hartwell County, and the Sheriff's Department has full jurisdiction on it. Campus Security calls the deputies for violence, weapons, threats, theft, serious harassment, a death, or anything else that is a matter of law rather than of college order.
When deputies are on campus, Campus Security supports them: it points them to the location, identifies the people involved, clears a route, and keeps others back. It does not direct them and does not take part in an investigation.
Reporting and staffing
Campus Security is staffed through the teaching day and on call outside it. A faculty member reaches the office through the posted campus line. In an emergency, call emergency services first and Campus Security second, and do not wait on either before moving people out of danger.
Campus Security answers to the Dean of Student Affairs for its ordinary work, and to the Vice President of Oakridge College on serious incidents, matters that cross the whole college, or anything involving senior staff.
Campus Security in roleplay
Campus Security is the answer to a scene that has stopped being playable at the classroom level. A professor who has lost control of a room, a student who will not leave, a confrontation in a hallway: an officer arriving changes the scene without ending it, and without needing a deputy on the sim.
Because officers are not sworn, they are also a good way to raise the stakes without closing the story. An officer can hold a situation, but they cannot resolve it. Anything that needs an arrest needs the Sheriff's Department, and that hands the scene to another set of players rather than finishing it.
OOC / Behind-the-scenes notes
OOC Notes: this page was written to fill a gap. The Faculty Handbook directs faculty to Campus Security throughout Section VII without any page defining who they are, so their standing, their limits, and their relationship to HCSD are set out here for the first time. The unsworn, unarmed framing is a proposal, chosen so the Sheriff's Department stays the county's only law enforcement and campus incidents still route into HCSD roleplay. Ratify, change, or discard it.