When B.J. Jenkins travels to Holland, England, France, or Israel, she first has to check out the local police station. “I always have a lot of questions about how police work in different countries,” says the twenty-two-year member of the College's safety staff.
“I tell them I'm from Union College in Schenectady, and they say, 'How do you spell that?'”
So, while others are taking in the sights, B.J. (short for Betty Jean) makes a point of touring the control centers at local and campus police stations, asking lots of questions about how they deal with members of their communities, particularly visiting foreign students who may not be familiar with local laws and customs.
“One thing I've learned is that most countries are much tougher on crime than we are in the U.S. If you do the crime, you're going to do the time.” She also has learned that police in many other cultures deal with people who have a lot more at stake than most Americans. “People in some countries are willing to die for things that we take for granted,” she said. “Things like freedom.”
The police are always very accommodating, she says, but she acknowledges that the police may not always give her the whole picture, leaving her to fill in the gaps with the same intuition that serves her on the job.
Her interest should come as no surprise to those who visit her at her post in the Nott Memorial, where she often fills the quiet moments with books and articles on criminology. It all began when she was a student at the University of Washington. “I was involved in lots of demonstrations,” she recalls. “Things like sit-ins and marches against the war and for equal opportunity. But I didn't do anything violent, and I didn't get arrested.”
Fascinated with how police and campus safety officers learned to deal with student unrest, she became a campus security officer while still a student. Later, she served as secretary to the university's president. While in both positions, she continued to demonstrate. “I would always tell my supervisor or the president what I was doing, and I always did it on my own time.”
Born in Mobile, Ala., and raised in Seattle, she found her way to Schenectady in 1971. She joined campus safety at Union in 1977 (as the first woman on the force) while taking classes toward her associate's degree in criminal justice from Schenectady County Community College. In 1982, the year her second child, Cy, graduated from Union, she embarked at Union on an organizing theme major with an emphasis on campus safety issues for women. She earned her bachelor's degree in 1988.
All but one member of her family graduated from Union. Her husband, Solomon, earned a master's in engineering. Cy graduated in 1982, Jill in 1994. (Darryl, her eldest, graduated from UW, where he played football.)
A longtime volunteer for the Schenectady Rape Crisis Center, she has worked as a counselor for raped and battered women and regularly assists women on campus. As a member of the Albany alumni chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, she has been involved with a number of community service projects.
Of taking her post in the Nott, she recalls, “I was worried I might get bored in here. But there's hardly ever a quiet moment.” Beside the exhibits and special events, there is no shortage of traffic in the form of curious visitors. “People come in here with all kinds of questions, like 'What do you use this building for?'”
Looking back at her career at Union, she recalls a number of campus incidents that still bring a smile – streakers at basketball games, the morning she had to alert President John Morris to stay in his house because a black bear was loose on campus, or the time she stumbled upon two women doing a daytime Naked Nott Run. “I said, 'Girls, I won't ask you for ID, but I suggest you run as fast as you can.'”
As she contemplates retirement in the next year, she is planning her next adventure: a Ph.D. in criminology with the goal of teaching students about computer crime.