Wayne State College isn’t known for being a dangerous campus, but even without that title, WSC could still focus more on the safety and security of its students.
WSC is an open campus, meaning anyone can walk onto the campus without being IDed or getting a visitor’s pass. Although the town might like the idea of being able to walk onto the campus at any point, it can be a threat to the students on campus.
Just earlier this year, the students had several alarming situations including a man videoing students and their vehicles and posting photos of guns and other weapons on that same social media account.
The students were going wild over the fact that this man could come onto campus at any time and take the lives of students or cause serious harm.
WSC is well-known for the protests that the students hold each year. Students protest major topics within the government and the community, which can cause some major political and moral issues not only with students but also with the Wayne community. Anyone from the community can come to those protests, potentially making things get out of hand or starting an argument between the two different viewpoints. With WSC being in rural Nebraska, there are bound to be major political differences.
A major risk of having an open campus is the idea of a random person walking on the campus and opening fire. According to AP News, there was a school shooting on April 29, 2025, on the campus of Elizabeth City State University in Eastern North Carolina. ECSU is a historically black university with a population of around 2,500 students. Although WSC is not a primarily black college, it does house quite a bit more black students than the community surrounding the college, over 50 international students, and houses about double the number of students in all.
Living in rural Nebraska opens the students up to the possibility of racially motivated comments and hate crimes. The US Department of Justice shows that there have been about 180 reported hate crimes in Nebraska from 2021 to 2023, with about 105 of the hate crimes being because of race, ethnicity or ancestry.
If someone with ill intentions were to come onto campus, campus security has limitations on how they can protect the campus. Campus security cannot make arrests and has no actual safety value when it comes to someone posing a threat to the campus.
“Staff members handle all calls professionally and are assisted by WPD at any time,” Campus Security Manager Jason Mrsny said. “Campus Security conducts tabletop exercise to prepare for active shooters, fires, bomb threats, severe weather events, protests and other safety-related issues.”
Many students feel that campus security is only good at writing tickets and letting students into buildings when there isn’t a residence assistant to call. Even then, when campus security shows up to help the students, the campus security is cold and doesn’t seem to be happy to help them.
The WSC website states that campus security provides a visible deterrent and active response to criminal activity and responds to all emergencies on campus, but that poses a question: What is the point of having campus security when they are just going to call the police? Calling campus security adds one more step to the process since campus security has to notify 911 of every major situation.
Hiring on-campus police officers who have the ability to make arrests and protect the students would not only be beneficial to students’ safety, but it would also be beneficial for the college as well. WSC would no longer be employing students who can only do half of the job of police officers with limitations but instead employ officers who can do the full job of protecting the campus.
Campus security around WSC either takes the job not so seriously or takes it way too seriously. While some campus security officers let the power get to their heads, other members of campus security don’t take the job seriously enough. A peer mentor at WSC has heard stories from her students about their experiences with campus security.
“I’ve had several of my students tell me that they called campus security because of a flat tire or because they were snowed in,” the WSC peer mentor said. “In each story that I’ve been told, the students informed me that campus security had given them a shovel or a jack, then got back in their car and drove away without helping the students.”
If students can’t trust campus security to help them get their car out of the snow or help them change a flat tire, how are they supposed to trust them to protect their lives?
Having a closed campus may help WSC enforce the dry campus policy, seeing as it would make it harder for students to sneak alcohol into buildings. Mrsny disagreed, saying that he feels that having a closed campus will not help enforce the dry campus policy.
Being a closed campus has a lot of benefits that go along with it. The only major negative is that students feel isolated from the rest of the town.
WSC students would be safer with a closed campus policy and real police officers patrolling the campus. A closed campus will show WSC parents exactly what WSC claims to be providing: a safe and protected environment for students to learn and study within.
