The University has begun the search for a new Director of Public Safety to replace Maryann Wiggin, who left suddenly during the middle of last semester.

David Meyer, who has assumed the position of Interim Director of Public Safety, will return to his role as Associate Director of Public Safety when a replacement is hired.

“We’re looking for someone who has a large field experience,” Meyer said. “We’re not a campus police, so we want someone who is not going to be a police officer.”

A three-person WSA committee is helping with the search. The applicants have already been narrowed down based on a series of phone interviews, some of which were conducted by Meyer. A set of three final candidates will come to campus for in-person interviews with members of the WSA Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC).

“Those three will be narrowed down to two, if all goes well,” said Chair of the WSA Community Outreach Committee Nora Connor ’07, who also co-chairs PSAC with Meyer. “[The candidates] will be brought back for more meetings with students and campus administrators in May, and hopefully we will have the position filled by June 1.”

According to Meyer and Connor, the candidates will also meet with Dean Mike Whaley, some ResLife staff members, physical plant, and several of the other departments with whom they will have direct interaction.

“Because this is such an encompassing position, there are a lot of different departments that have interaction [with the director],” Meyer said.

The first candidate meeting will be held this Monday. The three-person WSA committee, which also includes Max Rosen ’07 and Jason Harris ’09, intends to meet on Saturday to finalize the questions it intends to ask.

“I’m going to be looking for a [person] who is socially aware,” Harris said. “Someone who is good at dealing with racial and diverse populations; a person who is flexible and able to talk with student and express things openly.”

According to Connor, several of the questions will involve the major issues that PSAC has been tackling this semester, including racial profiling and campus-wide alert messages.

“The language in alert messages is a key issue right now,” Connor said. “There’s also been transgender issues…and lot of students are concerned with the party policy. I will be looking to see if I can gather any type of personal biases as well, because that’s going to have a major effect on [student relations].”

Students are concerned the communication and openness of the new director.

“[PSAC] has a lot of influence,” Harris said. “In this past year, Dave Meyer was very open to our suggestions. It was more of a collaborative thing…we worked closely together on many points, and [Meyer] was very receptive and willing to cooperate.”

As a result of PSAC meetings and student input, Meyer is now doing a review and update of the all-campus email policy.

“With some issues, we only need to notify a certain group or certain area,” Meyer said. “Instead of us putting out an alert to the whole campus, we are looking into working with ResLife to send out [emails] to specific areas [on campus].”

According to Connor, the three candidate interviews will be done before spring break.

“Right now relations, I would say, are very good,” Connor said. “I think we need to make sure the person who comes in can maintain the relationship with the community. We don’t want someone that’s going to come in and overhaul the system as it stands.”