In light of the recent Rugby Road-area robberies and the influx of University email alerts, many students are questioning the effectiveness of the security apparatus that has exploded around the University over the past few years. While it is unfair to point to any specific crime and blame one particular program for not preventing it, the recent armed robberies did occur at precisely the location the ambassadors program patrols. These instances, more than a year since the program’s implementation, provide the University community an opportunity to assess its efficacy.
Ambassadors function more often than not as security theater for visiting parents. The role of the ambassadors is ill-defined at best (the University’s press release described them as providing “a friendly, helpful level of security”) and while the University does not publish data about exactly how often ambassadors have intervened in crisis situations, many students have personal experiences demonstrating their ineffectiveness — moments when drunk friends weren’t helped among other failings. None of this is to say the ambassador program has done no good, rather that considering limited security resources and the program’s $1.6 million budget — to fund individuals who, typically, are limited to calling 911 on your behalf — investing so much in this effort as currently designed seems dubious.
While ambassadors don’t appear to add much by way of safety for the student body, local police are dramatically escalating their presence in a seemingly arbitrary matter. As columnist Jesse Berman noted, Charlottesville Police “appear to be cracking down in places where they never before have, and this trend is unnecessary and ultimately works against the desired goals of the force.” In practice this has meant multiple fraternity parties shut down without outside noise complaints, legal-age student drinking on the Lawn being increasingly monitored and as many as half a dozen police cars (if not more) on the Corner many nights. This constant surveillance has only created an adversarial relationship with the student body — not served to make us safer.
These concerns intersect with other student worries about the disparity between how black and white students are treated by law enforcement and the efficacy of administrative response to sexual assault. There is definitely a positive role the University and local police forces can (and do) play in student life, but if the goal is to treat students as active partners rather than as a hostile population to be monitored, that mission remains incomplete. Too often the University seems to deal with public health concerns through the framework of law enforcement. An honest appraisal of what security approaches are and aren’t working would begin with eliminating the ambassadors and replacing them with something that works.
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