Winthrop University, in an effort to further enforce COVID-19 safety guidelines as well as general campus safety, has implemented a campus safety ambassador program in which students are hired to walk around campus encouraging other students to adhere to safety guidelines.
Nine students were hired as campus safety ambassadors and found out about the job through a variety of different sources.
“I was looking for jobs on campus, and this was just one on the listing that was really high up and it really seemed like something I could do, especially because it was a new thing,” said Campus Safety Ambassador Erin Catoe. “I just want to try something different, you know, and when I had my interview, they said it’s a pilot program…I want to stick with this because it’s just something different, and not many other people have this opportunity.”
Campus Safety Ambassador Shivani Dahya also heard about the position through Winthrop’s hiring announcements.
“It was my friend, she also works as an ambassador, and I was telling her how I needed a job, so then she was like, ‘hey, this place is hiring, and they have positions available.’ So, then I just went to it and applied on the careers page. That’s how I heard about it,” Dahya said.
The position was also announced at the information desk at the DiGiorgio Campus Center.
“I was actually looking into applying at the information desk and all of the positions were filled. So, I was talking to the head supervisor over there, I don’t really remember her name, but she told me that this new position was coming out and that they were looking for people. So that’s how I found out about it,” said Campus Safety Ambassador Misha Madison.
The students who were hired as ambassadors were hired to the position because they genuinely want to make a difference on their campus and have the opportunity to connect with other students.
“I think my main purpose of applying is because I knew with this position, I would be able to talk to people, which was something we are not able to do right now because we’re in a pandemic, but it’s easy with that job to go and talk to people while you’re there,” Madison said. “The job isn’t just to tell people to put masks on or social distance; it’s also to get to know people who are constantly at DiGs and kind of develop relationships with people. So, I like that because I’m a social butterfly, so it’s nice to be able to talk to people.”
The job of campus safety ambassador is most easy to students who are naturally outgoing individuals; however, it is not essential that ambassadors be extroverts.
“Funny enough, I’m actually really not an extrovert,” Catoe said. “I’m able to do it for work and stuff, but outside of work, when I’m not in uniform, I’m really not that extroverted. So, I do think that it is necessary to be able to be that way for the job just so that you can actually build relationships with people because otherwise this job wouldn’t work. …This job helped me get out of my bubble a little bit and it was hard to talk to big groups, especially with seniors, it’s a little intimidating, but otherwise, I find it pretty easy and kind of second nature.”
The majority of campus safety ambassadors are underclassmen, and some find their newness to the school to be a potential roadblock to connecting with other students they come across while on the job.
“Because I am a freshman, I don’t know very many people on this campus. I actually hang out at my apartment most of the time, so I haven’t really gone out of my way to meet a bunch of people. You can tell when people are seniors or juniors,” Catoe said.
“They’re a little bit more stubborn because they’ve been here longer, and they haven’t had to deal with everything that COVID has made us deal with this year…so it’s a little bit more intimidating because I’m at the bottom, and they could probably tell I’m a freshman. They’re not gonna listen to me because they’ve never seen me before.”
The ambassadors have had both positive and negative experiences while on the job. Some of the most positive experiences have involved making new friends while on the job.
“I liked making a friend with one of the people in DiGs. He’s usually in the gaming center and he is just really chill with everybody. He’ll let me play games with him whenever I’m off my patrolling for a few minutes, and it’s really
relaxing to not have to just stay cooped up in my office all the time and still being able to keep an eye on everything,” Catoe said.
Some ambassadors have only had positive experiences while on the job.
“I haven’t had any bad experiences, thankfully,” Dahya said. “You would think when you apply for the job, and first start out, people aren’t gonna like you, like, they’re going to be mean to you, but people have been actually very friendly. They say hi when you walk by, like, they acknowledge that you’re there. ”
Some ambassadors, however, have experienced some adverse reactions from other students while on the job.
“A guy shook his water bottle at me one time when I told him to put his mask back on, and it was really weird,” Madison said.
“Unless you’re actively eating or drinking, because that’s the policy, keep your mask on in the building. Unless you’re actively eating or you’re taking a sip of water at that time, otherwise, you put your mask back on, and so I was just trying to explain that to him, and he picked up his Gatorade bottle and stuck it in my face, and I said, ‘Are you actively drinking that, sir?’ A lot of people usually are either going to meet you with indifference, or they
are going to act like you’re not there, but they hear you, and they comply. If they start laughing behind your back, which happens a lot, we’re just supposed to walk away and be a bigger person and know that we did our job.”
As of now, campus safety ambassadors are only stationed in the DiGiorgio Campus Center in the evenings but have plans to soon patrol the West Center as well. The campus safety ambassador program is going to stay around even after the university no longer finds it necessary to implement COVID-19 safety guidelines because the ambassadors are doing a great job with encouraging general safety on campus as well as COVID-19
safety.
Photo by Jamia Johnson
