Last Friday Professional Security went to De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester city centre, to interview Indy Singh, the new head of security at DMU. Among the members of his team we were introduced to was Fred, who was sitting on team leader Nigel Burnham’s desk.
If that may seem too familiar, his eyes were bright, his smile wide, and his black uniform was immaculate. Credit to the suppliers for having such a small size. For Fred was a cuddly toy bear, and a mascot, brought in as part of the security department’s work with freshers. In a world where meerkats and bulldogs sell insurance, why not? It’s one example of how Security has to make itself endearing to students, who after all may come from abroad and not be used to the British way of policing (and private security) by consent.
A problem is that crime prevention advice has to jostle with all the other stuff that students, typically aged 18, are given on their arrival at a campus in a town or city, or even country, that may be unfamiliar. The stuff – to take the welcome programme at the University of Edinburgh as an example – includes ‘culture shock’, budgeting and getting involved with the campus community, quite apart from finding your way around.
Plymouth City Council’s website is an example of an advice page for newcomers to a city.
Institutions – the University of Kent at Canterbury is a good example – may place online what their security department does and offers. Kent is among the users of the SafeZone app from CriticalArc, that can receive safety alerts and allows the user to send messages to Security, even when off campus. However, as with all this advice and services, it’s another thing to achieve take-up from students (and staff).
University security departments however well-meaning, if not savvy enough in how they deliver messaging may come across as too like students’ parents – and get ignored. It may turn out that the student who thinks they know best is the one that ignores safety tips and then has to troop to the security lodge the next day to report a stolen laptop (after leaving it on a desk to keep a place while you hang out over a coffee) or mobile phone (opportunist thieves may snatch easily portable and sellable tech devices from the hands of unsuspecting users on the street).
As that implies, petty urban crime can happen to anyone. So too can spiking of drinks, although as the group Universities UK recently pointed out, misconceptions about the nature of this crime are common, and data on its scale limited. So likewise illegal drug use is hardly confined to students among young people (or people of any age). At their spring conference, the chiefs of security association Aucso heard how drug misuse is not so much on campus property but in halls of residence. The problem there for Security may be that if patrollers smell or see something suspicious, they have to balance crime prevention and duty of care to students with respect for their privacy in their rooms.
The start of the academic year may be the time that students are at their most willing to experiment (and with most money to spend). Security departments, while keen to use freshers week events such as fairs to put themselves in front of students, and when taking ID photos and handing out identity cards, are there for the duration, looking after the welfare of students from enrolment to graduation; the giving of advice can be regular, whether at physical events (pop up banners and campaigns) or online (including Security taking advice from their institution’s comms and marketing specialists – TikTok is the platform to use, giving short, snappy, relatable and visual messages).
Ollie Curran, deputy head of security at University College London (UCL), told Professional Security: “Any security manager will do their best to get the message out there; we are using any tools to get the message to the freshers.”
More in the November print edition of Professional Security magazine.
