The Man Behind the Black Shirt and Bow Tie

As James Christensen walks into the UW-Milwaukee Cambridge Common, he’s ecstatic as usual. His security badge picture matches the smile on his face. Wrapped around his neck is a bowtie, the one thing he’s especially known for around campus.

He clocks in. He straps on a heavy set of keys to his belt. He sits down and prays that nothing goes wrong in the next few hours.

He’s nose deep into a psychology textbook as the night goes on. It’s an easy night until the silence ends abruptly. He gets a call that the fire alarm was just set off. He and the other security guards scramble to find the source of the fire. They prepare for the worst-case scenario.

While hundreds of students file through the halls to meet a fire truck waiting outside, Christensen and the other security guards find the source of the fire. Someone had put ramen in the microwave without water…again.

Christensen is just one of the many of support staff who make a university as large at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee run smoothly. He might not get the headlines, but he’s one of the campus characters who’s become a familiar fixture to students. And he’s a student himself.

James Christensen is a senior and working on getting his undergraduate in Psychology. After acquiring his graduate degree, he aspires to be a high school or college guidance counselor.

Many students know James Christensen especially for his bowtie and cheerful personality, but the bowtie was never supposed to be a fashion statement.

“I wore it once, and the next day people complained that I didn’t wear it,” Christensen said. “So I’ve worn it ever since.”

Christensen hails from Racine, WI, and is one of seven children.

Christensen’s twin brother John also took the same 30-mile trek north to Milwaukee. Both have called UWM “school” since 2011.

“As cliché as it sounds throughout elementary, middle, and even high school, we did most of the same curricular activities,” John Christensen said.

Acting has been a huge part of both James’ and John’s lives. They have acted in more then 20 high school musicals.

It started when John was asked by a different high school to act in its school musical without even having to do an audition. Being that Walden III high school had students play for other school’s sports teams, acting was the same situation. After the twins’ first show it was history, they were then Racine’s go-to actors.

James’ upbeat personality was shown through his acting, and now through the love for his job as security.

The irony is that the job he loves wasn’t his first choice. After the Grind and the past Emporium never called him for an interview, security was his saving grace.

Security guards at the dorms are students, but they go through an extensive training program to ensure that they are prepared for any situation. They train to take care of a simple microwave fire to the extreme of an active shooter on campus.

The life of campus security isn’t all saving lives and calling the police for suspicious smells. An emergency-free night means that getting homework done is the name of the game.

“Sometimes I get more homework done at work, than I do at home,” Christensen said.

“I’ve known that I wanted to do this since I was in 8^th grade,” Christensen said.

The one-on-one encounters that he goes through on a daily basis are training for his future career.

The trend never caught on through his troop of security though. He gave his fellow employees bowties his junior year as Christmas gifts. Although it was a great gesture he’s still the only one who rocks a bowtie.

Ensuring students’ safety is the main goal of security at UWM but having to deal with unruly students was one of the biggest problems for Christensen when he first started.

“You have to document the situation, not the person,” Christensen said.

Although Christensen is a cheerful security guard, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t gotten dirty looks and the cold shoulder from students he’s dealt with on campus.

He likes to remember a quote he heard from his supervisors when dealing with students. “If everybody liked you, then no one would love you.”

Even though Christensen has to work long night shifts of swiping cards and helping students he doesn’t regret working security one bit.

“The job taught me how to say no,” Christensen said. “I learned responsibility, and how to confront people.”

Christensen might be the only security guard who wears a bowtie, but he isn’t the only Christensen that works for security. He got his twin brother John a job for security. Although they both work for security, they don’t work in the same building.

“Every single day I get mistaken for him,” John Christensen said. “I feel awkward when random people hug me and start conversations that I don’t know of.”

The scalded waterless ramen was removed from the microwave; James Christensen walks backs to the Cambridge Service desk wide awake with adrenaline still pumping. He wasn’t the fire extinguisher wielding security guard that saved the day, but he did manage to keep his cool and look good doing it with his unmistakable bowtie.