Oak Park and River Forest High School named Traccye Love as the new director of campus safety and support at the Dec. 21 board of education meeting.
Love replaces Cindy Guerra, who resigned in November after four months on the job due to personal reasons. Guerra replaced Cherylynn Jones-Macleod, who held the position for a year.
Love has an extensive background in the police force, most of which has been spent in Oak Park. She began her career as a telecommunications dispatcher in Downers Grove. In 2011, she became a police officer for the Oak Park Police Department, working in community relations. As she proceeded in her career, she was promoted to patrol sergeant, she said.
Love graduated from Millikin University with a bachelor’s degree in political science. However, pursuing a career as a lawyer wasn’t the right step for her, she said. This led her to study criminal and social justice at Lewis University, where she earned her masters of science degree in 2008, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Her career in the police department spanned 12 years, she said. Principal Lynda Parker said that “It was important to me to find somebody that had a [law-enforcement] background, but also understands the restorative approach we take with students.”
Love said that the switch from the police force to campus security was important to her for several reasons. A primary factor to her was family, she said.
“The high school will give me an opportunity to be a little bit more flexible with my family life,” said Love. “What it really came down to was being able to have a seat at the table on school safety.”
Additionally, Love explained, “I’m very invested in the safety of the school and all of the procedures, and I want to be able to have that conversation with the school directly.”
Love was born on the South Side of Chicago and now calls Oak Park home. When commenting on her reasoning for coming to OPRF specifically, she said, “This is the community that I claim.” She emphasized the importance of community in the building and having a strong relationship with students throughout the school.
Assistant Principal of Operations David Narain said that Love is a very “effective communicator.”
Love said she hopes to hold monthly meetings with students to hear ab out their experiences in the building and form relationships between the students and faculty. “I want the students to feel comfortable and safe when interacting with the security team here, and the team already seems to have been doing well promoting that,” she said. “I’m just hoping to build on it.”
Narain also said that “We want to draw a balance between freedom and safety, making sure our students don’t feel like they’re being policed, and Love does a great job with that.”
Parker also said, “With her personality and background in law, I’m excited to see where she can take us.”
Narain also said that while everything was running smoothly during the gap between Guerra’s resignation, with the hiring of Love, “We’ll be able to go back to how everything’s really supposed to be, and I’m really happy to have her here.”
He added, “In the few weeks that she’s been here, she’s been nothing but great.”
Love says that her overall goal in the position of director of campus safety is to leave students “feeling empowered by their own safety.” Nonetheless, she mentioned that students are responsible for keeping the building safe too.
“We’re all a part of campus security, and that’s the kind of legacy that I want to build here.”
