Educational facilities are a place where one discovers the world as well as themselves. It’s for this reason that diversity and inclusion on campuses is crucial. A campus must be a safe and inclusive environment that meets the needs of all people, including people with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, members of racialized, religious, and LGBTQ+ communities.
Campus security has a major role to play in providing an equitable, diverse, and inclusive space for students to pursue their passion. Security guards on campus are the first line of defense for students experiencing harassment, racism, bigotry, and sexism. For students to feel secure, they need to be able to trust that campus security understands their needs.
Without proper implementation of diversity policies, forward-thinking diversity training, and inclusion training, campuses will be an unsafe environment for students, staff, faculty, and security guards.
RESOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
- Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) values must start from the top down. This means that any company engaged to provide campus security must have clear policies and a clear code of ethics in place that ensure the values of EDI are promoted internally. Company values have to reflect that of the safe, modern, and diverse world we want to live in. Every employee in the company, from the CEO down to the new hires MUST sign a declaration stating they will uphold these values at all times.
- Diversity and inclusion training must be robust, innovative, and ongoing. To ensure the mistakes of the past are not repeated, we must continually grow our understanding of the world in which we live as it pertains to EDI values. This training must deliver the understanding of an anti-oppressive approach to campus security. Along with training campus security, all other stakeholders should participate (teachers, staff etc.) in order to maximize the effect. For instance, at GardaWorld, the EDI training program has been designed to raise the participant’s awareness of the importance of diversity and inclusion. The various topics discussed in this training will allow the security guard to better understand diversity and to identify his/her own uniqueness and what defines him/her. The course covers the concepts of diversity, inclusion, and culture.
- Moreover, any complaints lodged against campus security should be investigated by an outside body or office. Objective analysis of all incidents is absolutely necessary to ensure fair and equitable resolutions and findings. Ensuring each individual is held accountable for their own actions, and accountable to the Code of Ethics that has been established is of prime importance. Expert external analysis of each complaint must be done to provide peace of mind to all staff and students.
Campus security has a pivotal role to play in providing a safe place for students to learn, teachers to teach, and people to grow as individuals. This can only be achieved through rigorous and ongoing implementation of EDI Values through policy, training, and enforcement.
GardaWorld offers security solutions specifically designed for the education sector; we work closely with school authorities to design flexible and sustainable security programs that meet the specific security needs of our clients.
