Illusion of Security

Why do people prefer an illusion of security to facing the fact that the world is a dangerous place, when doing so could help them prepare for the danger?

In the building where I live, we are required to show our key and ID to a security guard behind a desk. It used to be that we only had to show our key between the hours of 8 PM and 2 AM. This policy arose when campus police received a phony call that there had been a shooting in the building. However, there was no shooting. The caller was apprehended and is banned from campus. There was never a real danger, and the nut who put a campus in fear is in the hands of the authorities.

Do the desk and security guard actually make my building any safer? No. Here's why. They are not allowed to carry weapons. They are only there to call campus police if something happens. I'll tell you something, if I wanted to do whatever this "something" is that everyone is afraid of, id get a big group of people and tie up or knock out the guard, which would not be a daunting task considering they are mostly old men rent-a-cops. Then I would run and go do whatever the hell it was I wanted to do.

Also, several of these guards don't really look at your key and ID. I walk past one of them every day that hes working and he barely notices me or moves his eyes from his computer screen. That's right, the guards are allowed to have laptops and they will go on-line or watch movies while they are on duty. Earlier today, I had forgotten to bring my key and ID when I went outside briefly to record video. When I came back inside and realized that, I was fully prepared to go through the steps of being looked up in the directory and signing out a key and everything that I needed to do, but the security guard didn't feel like doing all that work. He merely said, "Oh, I've seen you" and let me pass.

The school is wasting thousands of precious dollars on this "security" and people feel safer. But hey, it's more important to feel safe than to be safe, right?