Before YikYak, there was the WSC Underground.

Students here could post anonymously about the school and the professors. The site remained popular until Facebook took social media by storm and the Underground’s creator, Jacob Bettin, moved on to his next big thing.

Bettin, who graduated in 2001 from Northwest High school in Omaha, attended Metropolitan Community College before transferring to Wayne State College to major in criminal justice with a minor in journalism.

On campus, he served as advertising manager for the Wayne Stater as well as getting involved in activities such as the WSC Underground.

Presently, he works for the city of Omaha as a police officer in the Uniform Patrol Bureau. He worked as a spokesman in the Public Information Office (PIO) for four years, and was the face of the police department on the nightly news.

“That’s what I love about the Omaha Police Department. There are so many jobs within it,” Bettin said. “If you don’t like answering radio calls, you can go into a specialty unit or be a detective and so on and so forth.”

He also runs a Twitter account for OPD under the Twitter handle @OPDOfcBettin. Sometimes, his tweets even get picked up for news stories.

Along with serving for OPD, Bettin owns a security company in Omaha, Frontline Private Security, which keeps about 95 employees.

He chose WSC because he wanted a school that was smaller but close to Omaha.

“I liked the small-time atmosphere, and it is really easy to make a name for yourself at Wayne State,” Bettin said.

Bettin never actually graduated from WSC. He applied for a job with OPD in January 2004, over a year before he was expected to get his degree.

On the first day of classes for the spring semester in 2005, he received a phone call during his lunch break offering him a job. He skipped his afternoon classes to go into Hahn and withdraw from WSC.

“I called my parents and told them ‘I’m coming home, I got a job.’ By the end of the week I was in Omaha preparing for the police academy,” Bettin said.

Because of this experience, his advice for students would be to apply for jobs early.

The tagline for the WSC Underground website, started in 2003, was “where the First Amendment is your best friend.”

“Students could post anonymously about things in Wayne or things about the college. There was also a more formal section where students could rate their professor,” Bettin said.

Although some faculty had a problem with the website, there was community support from RainTree, and Bettin sold t-shirts online.

What advice does he have for criminal justice majors?

“Do not wait until you graduate to start applying for a law-enforcement agency. Law-enforcement jobs are pretty scarce,” Bettin said. “They only hire during certain times of the year.”

In Omaha, for example, 2,000 people will typically apply.

“That just shows you how real the hiring process can be,” Bettin said.