Description of the video:
Upbeat music plays while we are shown cuts between different students speaking, aerial shots of campus, and close-ups of the red chair.
Issa Oliver, criminal justice major and police cadet for IU Kokomo, sits in the Red Chair.
“The end goal actually is to be detective, so, to become detective, officer is kind of the way to go, so I’d like to see what it’s like,” Issa says. “First year, you’re going to be doing a lot of the, kind of the bottom of the barrel work like parking tickets, directing traffic, it’s not a lot. But I’m definitely going to keep working on the end goal, which next year, I’ll have a badge, and I’ll be sworn in to the state of Indiana. Me and Doug, actually, ride around sometimes and he tells me, and I’ll ask him, you know, ‘what was one time that was super hard for you?’ or ‘what was something super easy for you’ or ‘something memorable’ and there’s times he just tells me you just have to know what you’re getting into, like you start to realize how human you are, and like, everyone wants to look at the uniform, they wonder what’s going on, especially if you’re walking fast or running, then people start to get freaked out, but that’s typical, I mean I would get freaked out too.”
Issa continues “say I’m in Walmart and I see a police officer sprinting, I’m going to be like “oh my gosh, what’s happening.”
“And then when I’m out of uniform, no one bats an eye, I’m just another student.”
“I knew I wanted a smaller campus, I didn’t want something too big, too stressful for my situation, even though I’m going into an occupation that’s full of stress,” Issa says laughingly. “As it stands, I think I wanted to have more of a relaxed, hands on thing with the professors type of schooling, so it’s kind of a thing that you can talk to your professors without fearing that they’ll not be able to help you or not communicate with you, like on a bigger campus, and on this campus, you can talk to them on a more personal level, and I love that, and I’m glad I started where I did.”
IU Kokomo brand
Indiana University Kokomo, honoring the bicentennial
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