 "Photo: Photo courtesy of Adam Horgan")
Last week I was walking back from class, minding my own business and enjoying the beautiful 75 degree day until I was stopped by a security guard. I could not figure out what I had been doing that would require the attention of him. Then it dawned upon me that it’s “Maybe” weekend. He asked me what was in my backpack, to which I replied “books and notebooks.” He responded with “We’ll have to check that,” and opened up my bag. To his disappointment, it really was just notebooks and books. I was coming back from class. Well what do you know?
I understand that at 10 p.m. on a Saturday it looks suspicious to be walking around with a backpack. And while I disagree wholeheartedly that security guards on campus are allowed to check the bags, the fact is they can. It truly infuriates me that this security guard was checking my backpack at 6:20 p.m. on a Wednesday night though. Last time I checked, security is not in Hill/Vill circle on a normal Wednesday night checking bags, but that doesn’t seem to apply on the weekend formerly known as May Weekend.
“I personally am confused by the sudden increase in security for the weekend of April 23 to the 25,” junior entrepreneurship and business management double major Ben Wald said. “When browsing through the weekly student events e-mail we receive, I noticed nothing university recognized that requires for additional security.”
Not only is the university not recognizing May Weekend by hiring additional security guards, but there also seemed to be extra Residential Assistants on duty. Why would the university hire all this extra muscle for an unrecognized weekend at the end of April? Sounds like May Weekend to me.
“The only thing that keeps running through my mind is the cost incurred with this additional coverage,” Wald said. “These very funds that security has, should be diverted to a better cause, such as sexual abuse awareness, or maybe further customer service training to better train officers who are repeatedly cited for their inappropriate behavior. In the library, the guard shacks and at the shuttle stop in new haven; the things I have seen, and heard of as a student are atrocious.”
The last thing that drives me crazy about all the hypocrisy surrounding this weekend is how the university inconveniently scheduled Relay for Life to fall on the Friday of “May Weekend.” Relay is clearly one of the biggest events on campus, and one that makes me proud to be a Quinnipiac student. That being said, for it not being May Weekend, Quinnipiac was adamant that they put it on the same weekend when Relay first began here three years ago. I am proud to say that as a student body we have taken the high road and still participated and raised money and done a great job with it. It is very selfish of the university to make the organizers schedule Relay on not-May Weekend. They know students will still be celebrating, and want to quash it as best as they possibly can.
Now, I understand that of course the university cannot sponsor a weekend-long drinking fest. However, there is no reason they still can’t hold the amusements they once did minus the beer tents, which were a foolish liability in the first place. If the university wants no part in it, that is completely fine, but if there is to be no May Weekend send security home, resort to the normal amount of RA’s, let them put Relay on whatever weekend they want and stop checking backpacks randomly. If there is going to be some sort of school sponsored event, then I accept all of these other consequences. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Quinnipiac does not want May Weekend, fine, but stop acting like it does not exist and then going behind us and hiring extra security and all these other things that seem to happen only this weekend. You can go one way, or the other, but stop going both. We are educated college students, and we are not oblivious to all that goes on around us.
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