Mary Savage has been director of campus safety here at Connecticut College for a little over six months, with that important high school relationship anniversary passing on April 9. But what do most Connecticut College students know about our new campus safety director?
The Voice sat down with Mary Savage in the campus safety office in Nichols House, behind the Williams School, in an effort to get to know Savage. Before starting her position at Conn, Savage was the director of emergency planning, safety, and security operations at the Virginia Community College system, which features 40 campus locations in the Old Dominion, the site of the iconic Jamestown colony. “I spent a lot of time traveling, doing drills, writing plans, doing a lot of training and things like that,” Savage said. “So it’s good to be in one spot here.” When asked if it was a strange to now be in charge of one campus in a different part of the country, Savage replied, “Well actually I’m originally from New York so it’s not that big of a change, it’s almost like coming back home.”
Savage says the most important thing about adjusting to her new environment is learning the culture. “You just have to learn your surroundings, learning what Conn needs and what they want. I think the shared governance helps a lot,” she said, praising the involvement students have in the goings-on around campus. “The student leadership here has been awesome to me, in receiving me and informing me, and I find that to be really helpful. It’s a refreshing change from where I came from.” Another fun fact: Virginia is also the state with the cheapest cigarettes, an important distinction in these trying times.
Savage’s philosophy on keeping a campus safe prioritizes student safety through education. “The most important thing is to teach and train people to do what they need to do. I can’t ask you to evacuate a building if you don’t know where to go,” she said, noting that her current objectives include safety training and acquiring a newer, student-interactive emergency notification system. She also stated that her department is striving for a closer relationship between students and campus safety officers. “I’d like to say it’s going pretty good. I think my department and I are working hard to be more accessible to students.”
We won’t see any drastic alterations to campus safety policy compared to previous years, at least in the near future. “I wouldn’t call them changes,” Savage said. “Right now we’re training the staff and administration on how to handle situations on campus, and going forward, to train the Res Life and REAL staff for emergency response.” In addition, Savage outlined her staffing plan for the future: “Right now we have 17 [campus safety] officers, and I’m looking to hire a couple more, we just finished the recruitment process for one more part-time on-call officer that I think will be a good addition to the department, adding some diversity.”
When asked if these new hires stem from a greater need for campus safety officers, Savage replied that this is not the case. “When you have a department that runs 24 hours a day, you don’t want to burn your staff out… It would be nice to have enough people so that the current staff isn’t overworked or taxed. They need days off just like everybody else.”
As far as the new campus safety vehicles go, Savage says they were already in the works before she arrived, but she likes the new look. I think most can agree—they’re a definite step up from the fleet of white minivans of previous years. She notes she is responsible for the flashing lights on the new cars, but stresses that these are only for emergencies. “Our goal is not to act like police, but we have to have some way to identify ourselves, escort ambulances and fire[trucks] and folks like that. I think it’s a good look, it’s not too much.” I, for one, was surprised the first time I saw a campus safety car with a full light rack, but that’s just me.
Savage stresses that the office environment of the campus safety director has evolved since her tenure. She elaborates that her office in Nichols House “used to be a storage room,” but is now a working office. Savages says she “didn’t like the idea of being upstairs because all of the officers are downstairs, and I wanted to be where they were. So I had the fireplace covered up and got all the storage junk out of here, and I like it.” She also voiced that her long-term goal is to move the office closer to the center of campus, unlike where it is now, in the conveniently-located South Lot.
Lastly, the million-dollar question: Floralia plans. “This is my first Floralia, so I’m not making any major changes, I don’t really have any frame of reference… The hope is that we don’t have any major issues, but I’m not making dramatic changes, not this year anyway, until I’ve had a chance to experience [Floralia] and make my own assessment.” Savage also added that “as long as we can keep everybody safe and everybody can have fun, that’s what the day is supposed to be about, right?” Indeed, Director Savage, indeed.
