Campus Cops
Letter

January 1996

Letter in Illinois Times

January 4, 1996

To the editor:

Jeff Ignatius reported last week that SCUIS (the So-Called University of Illinois at Springfield) is bringing in additional police officers. This news will come as a surprise to most people on campus, since the administration has not publicly reported these plans. Since the administration has been unable to operate even a small force adequately, I have to wonder how it will handle a larger one. To hire additional officers without first taking care of unfinished business is as irresponsible as the decision to hire the police in the first place.

Last June, the administration admitted it had never given its police the promised "one-week course related to being a police officer in a college setting." Whether they have trained the officers in the six months since then has never been reported. There still appears to be no effective oversight of the police, no role for the campus community in police training, and no on-campus complaint procedure for police misconduct and brutality.

What the administration has done is make a constant effort to enhance the police force's public image. I can understand this, since the police have done so much to deserve the ridicule they generally receive. If you can't fix the substance, you can try to fix the appearance. Yet all the pictures of smiling Officers Friendly in the student newspaper and campus mailings will not change the views of faculty, staff, and students who have actually observed or been confronted by these officers.

The focus on image is in keeping with the reason the police are on campus in the first place. Ignatius repeated the administration's old claim that the cops are there to protect the university from liability. However, a series of Faculty Senate meetings held before Naomi Lynn hired the police effectively demolished the liability argument. Also demolished was the argument that the police would make the campus safer. About all the administration could come up with in the end was that some people would feel safer and that having a "professional force" would look good outside the university. Consequently, the Faculty Senate opposed hiring the police.

Lynn ignored the Senate vote. Her lack of concern for campus governance and collaborative decision making has escalated dramatically since then. The administration continues to stamp out everything that made Sangamon State University interesting. This may please the new bosses in Champaign, but our students, staff, and faculty will be worse off in the end.

Dennis Fox