Wofford College is a thriving community with many organizations and institutions on campus to keep the community happy, healthy and safe. One of the ways that Wofford remains safe is through the protection and service of Campus Safety.
Campus Safety is Wofford’s very own police force, and is headed by Officer Dwayne Harris. Harris is a 1986 graduate of Wofford, and played on the school’s basketball team. Currently, this is his 25th year with campus security.
Including Harris, Campus Safety has 16 officers, including dispatchers, shift supervisors, training officers and officers, all working to protect the Wofford community, some of whom have similar connections to Wofford as Harris.
“We’re here to serve and protect, serving is the main thing, so anything we can do from a campus safety standpoint in order to help students or anyone on campus,” Harris said.
Campus Safety officers can help students in a number of ways that many in the community may not know about, such as helping to change a tire, going to pick up medicine for students without cars on campus, jumping cars whose batteries have died and providing escorts for people who may not be able to easily get to other locations on campus.
While serving students and other members of the community in these ways may not be a part of these officers’ job descriptions, it is something they tend to enjoy doing since it can make such a positive impact on the students’ experience while at Wofford.
While serving the community in these ways are a part of what Campus Safety does, they are also here to protect students in a number of ways, including in ways that are not as easily seen.
“If it’s just observing the campus from a safety standpoint, seeing what possible hazards there may be. You know, most people see us as just writing parking tickets and doing escorts and those kinds of things,” Harris said.
Campus Safety also does training in the event that there was an active shooter on campus, or some other intruder on campus who could cause harm. There are also other trainings that they do that goes unnoticed, since it is more behind the scenes than the other work that they do.
There are procedures in place for when a student goes missing as well as vehicle theft, though these are not common occurrences on Wofford’s campus, since it is such a small and safe community. Because of Wofford’s size, Campus Security officers are able to build relationships with students and faculty members.
“The relationships and getting to know students – it’s amazing how these kids can graduate and ten, fifteen years later they’re on campus and come find me. When you build those kind of relationships, it makes the job so much easier and so much more worthwhile,” Harris said.
Through building these relationships with students, Harris hopes that Campus Safety is able to help students learn life lessons outside of the classroom. Many of these life lessons can be taught to students by Campus Safety are lessons that would have a much larger impact on their life if it was not something handled by Campus Safety.
In this way, Campus Safety is very different from a sheriff’s department or other police force, in that they are able to use more discretion in the way that they handle different situations, which could alter a student’s life if handled by officers outside of Campus Safety.
Campus Safety is meant to help students and other members of the Wofford community not only learn life lessons, but also to help protect and serve them, sometimes in ways that go unseen, and even the mundane aspects of their jobs help those in the community in so many different ways.
