Earl Green was a happy man the first week of classes.
“If the students themselves are saying ‘I’m not seeing much going on, it seems really quiet’ I think it’s great,” said Green, manager of campus security.
Green said this semester has been off to a relatively smooth start for student safety compared to past years, with few reported incidents up to Sept. 19.
According to posted statistics on the college’s website, property theft is the most common security issue faced by students at Algonquin. Cell phones and laptops are some of the most commonly stolen items.
Pat Mulholland, a second-year music industry arts student, had his bicycle stolen during an afternoon class over the summer. Mulholland said that someone cut his lock and he reported the incident to security.
“We got cameras all over the place; you’d figure they’d see the guy with the big-ass cable cutter,” said Mulholland.
Mulholland’s bike has yet to be recovered and since then he has doubts about the effectiveness of the available security cameras.
Despite this, college president Cheryl Jensen says there are very few blind spots.
“I sat in the control room last winter and you should feel very safe at this campus because we had a security person walk around the campus and I followed him by camera everywhere,” said Jensen.
Jensen said that she lost sight of the security guard for no more than 10 seconds in the span of an hour. She also said that some areas are not monitored for the sake of student privacy.
Still, incidents happen.
Alex Mahon, a former bartender at the Observatory, said that he witnessed and tried to stop a fight at the bar in 2012 and it escalated rather quickly.
“The off-shift bartender and myself tried to intervene; some pool cues got involved.
“It was a serious fight and security basically saved our asses,” said Mahon.
Mahon said that another bartender used the panic button to call security.
“To their credit there was this one guy who was involved in the fight who was gigantic but he was not going to go quietly.
“It took three of them to fully restrain him and they were not using excessive force, they were just keeping him at bay,” said Mahon.
Mahon said that he witnessed security resolve a number of other acts of disorderly conduct during his time working in the Ob.
When security guards at the college aren’t holding back bar brawls they also serve as a 911 call centre for the area surrounding the Ottawa campus. If a person uses a non-college phone to call 911 it will ring to campus security and the Ottawa police dispatch centre as well.
“We’re quite often on scene before the police are; our response time on campus from my staff is three minutes or less,” said Green.
Despite fast response times by security, some students still feel Ottawa campus could take steps to provide students with more piece of mind.
“We got the Blue Light Stations but I know we don’t have as many as other campuses do,” said Josh Carmin, a first-year Computer System Technician student.
“I know in Kingston at Queens, (they) have so many that they have a drinking game revolving around them.”
Green said that there is an ongoing plan to install more Blue Light Stations and emergency telephones on campus to make emergency services more accessible.
Algonquin has had an official “Mobile Safety” phone application available for download since 2014 on the Google Play Store and 2015 on the App Store. Despite its availability many students are unaware of it and it has yet to surpass 1,000 downloads on the Play Store.
Green said in coming weeks security plans on advertising the app more so students can stay informed and he aims to encourage more communication between students and security.