Where are they?

I'd like to know exactly whom Notre Dame Security Police is here to protect and serve, because I'm starting to have trouble believing it's the students. Even though we are the ones who support them and pay their salaries through our tuition payments and, later, alumni donations, I honestly don't think I can say it is the students they are out to serve.

Take for example the plight of a fellow student last Sunday as we were leaving our MCAT class at the Kaplan Center just a block or two away from campus. This girl discovered that in the snow and 15-degree weather, she had left her lights on and was left with a dead battery. After trying in vain to jump her car, we figured we could call NDSP for a jump or some form of help. Unfortunately, we were told they didn't leave campus to help students.

Now, this policy wouldn't have bothered me too much if I didn't often see NDSP cars writing tickets for traffic violations and accidents on Ivy, Douglas and Edison. Obviously, they don't mind leaving campus too much to write tickets.

But this also comes from the same police force that can't catch muggers and burglars on campus (in D6 parking lot just behind the Security Building and right in front of South Dining Hall to be exact), but yet always manages to issue dozens of drinking violations on any given weekend to those dangerous Notre Dame students.

My job with The Observer often causes me to leave our office in South Dining Hall in the middle of the night for the trek across campus back to my room. In the two and a half years I've worked here, and the countless early-morning trips I've made, I've yet to see a NDSP officer out on patrol on campus. Even if they never stop anyone on patrol, the presence of officers going around campus would help keep anyone away that knows he doesn't belong there.

But of course, who poses more of a threat: the guy looking to hold me up, possibly injure or kill me and steal my wallet, or those rambunctious drunk kids in Reckers at night.

In the wake of the Chad Sharon disappearance and the muggings that have occurred on and around campus this year, I think it's important for NDSP to analyze where the real threats lie.

Yes, it's true that minors — even Notre Dame students — should not be in a bar if it is against the law in that state, but is it really imperative that NDSP officers haul off to Boat Club on the night of the raid with student phonebooks in hand to issue ResLife notices?

After all, these are the same officers who could, instead, be back between Edison and Douglas securing the same campus they say they can't/won't leave, even to help their own students. But I guess they don't mind breaking that rule to punish their own students.

• Who's policing the police?