Ensuring the safety of Riverdale’s 27.5 acres of campus space in New York City presents unique challenges to school administration and security specialists. With one of the largest campuses in New York City and six buildings on the Hill Campus alone, Riverdale security has a lot of ground to cover. Even with this challenge, the security department and school administration also look at the opportunities security at Riverdale can present to go above and beyond to improve the student experience. 

In addition to ensuring that the areas on and around campus are physically safe, security at Riverdale aims to create a culture of safety that strengthens the “social and emotional health of the school community”, said Riverdale’s Head of Upper School, Mr. Mike Velez.

Mr. Mike McGinn joined Riverdale last November as the first person to hold the position of Director of Security. Among other responsibilities, he is tasked with ensuring coordination between the ten members of the security team, the administration and the student body “in both big scenarios and in the day to day”, said Mr. Velez. In that vein, Mr. McGinn became well known to the student body last spring when he spoke about the coyote that he said “had been living under one of the buildings on campus.”

While the subject of Mr. McGinn’s coyote announcement was seemingly on the more lighthearted side, dealing with uninvited wildlife is only the tip of the iceberg of his role at Riverdale. Mr. McGinn not only handles “planning for crisis management”, said Mr. Velez, but also implements “day-to-day” efforts to improve the student experience. According to Mr. Velez, bringing on a director of security allows for greater continuity between Riverdale community members. 

As part of this initiative, Mr. McGinn emphasized his goal: “get out there and interact with the school community, [and] let them know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.” He also mentioned a push to establish a greater understanding between students and security personnel regarding the reasons for certain policies. “We figured it’s better if you can build a relationship with students and faculty, if they know why you’re doing certain things. If you tell them why, then people will be like, ‘hey, well, that makes sense to me’”, McGinn said. 

The security team’s commitment to improving student life  is echoed elsewhere in the administration, too. “There’s certainly heightened sense around the need for more security and to ensure levels of safety” Mr. Velez explained. “But one of the reasons that we do so many drills is not to instill fear in students, but really so everyone knows how to respond… we’re fortunate to be a vibrant and caring community and protecting that is what we want to focus on.”

Though there is an effort to maximize the student experience, Mr. Velez reiterated the need to be “in tune with the realities of the world that we live in.” For the administration, that means preparing for an actual emergency scenario, much like what happened last May during which Riverdale locked down due to severe weather and downed power lines. “There are a lot of factors at play in that point”, Mr. Velez added. “One of the guiding questions is going to be: can we continue to run school for the remainder of the day?” Much of the work to be done revolves around Riverdale’s ability to keep school running for the day. This is where Mr. McGinn again comes in to act as “an incident commander,” he said. 

In addition to the concrete security measures that Riverdale has in place, Mr. Velez explained that much of the ability to create a feeling of safety at school lies with the students. “I think for a lot of students, there’s also that opportunity to take care of each other on a day-to-day basis”, he said. “Students on a peer-to-peer level can really care for one another in ways that help to ensure those levels of safety.” Security at Riverdale aims to go beyond fences and cameras to create an environment that is socially, emotionally and, most importantly, physically safe.