Put down the weapon and show me your ID.

Every day I am welcomed to Temple by a group of lethargic, unenthused individuals.

They sit in their tall chairs behind spotless desks reading long Statistics books or staring off into nothingness with jaded, joyless expressions on their faces.

Once an hour, they’ll crack a smile to someone they know. Spit out greetings briefly, then zone out all over again. As if zoning out was their job.

And it is.

I’m talking about campus security; particularly, the people who sit in buildings like Tuttleman, Pearson, and Annenbergh, and get money thrown at them for literally doing nothing.

Recently, as chronicled in the Temple News, a mentally disturbed student strolled into a Tuttleman computer room wearing a ski mask and carrying a broomstick. He proceeded to verbally harass some people. Not that anyone knew his wacky and, in the end, pointless intentions, but there’s a moral to this story.

What if someone walked into a classroom and actually got violent. What’s to stop someone with a good old ID card from strapping 50 grams of plutonium to their chest and strutting into a random room? What if that person wasn’t a Temple student at all?

Now you’re saying, “But the security people are checking for IDs.” Well, they’re supposed to be checking, but they don’t.

Even if they did check what would be the point? I could have a valid Temple idea in blazing cherry and white, and still be a certified psychopath. Who are we kidding?

Still, the university persists in paying for these inane, deadbeat jobs. Hell, I’d love to be campus security. It would mean getting to do my homework for $6 an hour! Now that’s a profession I wouldn’t mind going into.

I wonder what the training is like. “Alright, here’s how to act tired and disinterested. Now, here’s how to sleepily waive people in. Johnson, your eyes are too damn open!”

If there weren’t campus security folk taking up space in every building, maybe Temple would seem a little friendlier, a little safer. Maybe it would seem like an upright university with lots of shiny floor space and the like instead of an institution scared silly of “what might happen in North Philly”.

I know that I’d probably be a lot happier not having to sneak into Tuttleman or the Apollo with a deliberately indistinct look on my face and a tight feeling of trepidation in my gut. Well, maybe it’s not that extravagant an emotion, but I do feel like I’m crawling into someone else’s kitchen at three a.m. out to steal their last piece of tuna casserole.

On the other hand, some of the campus security personnel are nice and create a pleasant atmosphere in buildings like the Apollo or Pearson.

I guess you could say that I’m just murderously jealous of a group so intelligent that they took a job that entails just getting out of bed and periodically yawning. You don’t even have to brush your teeth.

I wish there were a major for that.

Oh yeah, it’s called Philosophy.