On the eve of finals week, officer Chris Meyn of Binghamton University’s New York State University Police allowed me to join him for his patrol from midnight to 4 a.m. of the campus.
Saturday was relatively quiet, which may have had something to do with the upcoming finals for which many students are studying, as well as the numbers who may have already departed campus after the last day of classes.
Right before picking me up at the Couper Administration Building at midnight, Meyn said he responded to a call regarding students observed on the roof of the Anderson Center. He said he saw students walking away from the building, but that they could not be charged since they were never identified on the building’s roof.
Meyn got another call later reporting that people were on the roof of the Anderson Center once again. This time, he and another officer were able to apprehend the group of 10 students who were on the roof.
Breaking onto the roof of the Anderson Center is apparently a fairly common practice for BU seniors near the end of their college career. Meyn said he believed the students University police apprehended were a different group than those involved in the first call.
“I hate climbing that ladder, it digs into my hands,” said one of Meyn’s colleagues on the scene.
The students were charged with trespassing, and the officers allowed me to help out with their processing by filling out some of the appearance tickets for the perpetrators.
While a call about trespassing may not occur every night, every call implies the same thing for the officers: paperwork.
“If you don’t like paperwork, don’t be a police officer,” Meyn said.
For the rest of night, I accompanied Meyn as he made his standard rounds around campus. In addition to laps around the Brain, Meyn and his partners routinely drive through various out-of-the-way parking lots and areas of campus, checking on what students are doing.
“The goal is to be visible,” Meyn said.
The University Police Department is primarily responsible for keeping the peace on campus because patience is a virtue for the officers.
While I was riding shotgun, Meyn was flagged down by a cab driver who complained about a student who was refusing to switch from the back row of the taxi’s seats to the middle row. The driver said he was feeling threatened by the student.
Meyn spoke to the student, who was visibly intoxicated and said he felt “emotionally damaged” by the incident. Meyn told him to remain calm down and simply not take that cab in the future.
“‘He said-he said’ situations are fairly common,” Meyn said.
There were a handful more calls around campus on Saturday, including one at around 2 a.m. for a girl lying on a curb. Meyn initially thought that she was passed out, but it turned out she was just upset about “being rejected.”
Meyn’s shift lasted until 7 a.m., but I didn’t have the resolve to keep going past 4 a.m. Before I departed, I asked Meyn to sum up his thoughts about the college populace.
“[They] sure makes things interesting,” he said.