Opinion
Officer enhancement won’t enhance our safety
By Brendon Kaufman '15
September 27, 2012
When The Spectator hit the shelves last Thursday, the student body let out a collective groan as they read the title of the front page article, “Campus Safety can now arrest students.” I, too, joined the campus-wide groaning as one simple question came to mind. Why?
I searched the article, deep into my own mind and into that of others for the answer. After much contemplation, there still doesn’t seem to be a satisfactory answer to why Campus Safety officers needed to undergo training to elevate to “enhanced status” to gain the abilities to “make arrests for misdemeanor crimes” and “hold small amounts of marijuana to destroy at a later date.”
The answer Director Fran Manfredo provided is that, besides the transformation being “the natural progression for Campus Safety,” enhanced status officers “better serve the Hamilton College Community.” If the goal of Campus Safety is to, well, keep the campus safe, it is already being accomplished, and I really don’t see the need for enhanced status. However, let’s examine cases in which the campus does need some extra security.
Looking at the annual crime report sent out every year, we notice that only a few categories are well populated: forcible sexual offenses, burglary and of course, drug and alcohol violations.
Unfortunately, the threat of a Campus Safety arrest won’t deter a sex offender. These malicious acts happen behind closed doors and are regrettably dealt with mostly after the fact. The tools to prevent these crimes lie with a number of factors like education and awareness but not with Campus Safety.
How about burglary? Someone wishing to steal will do so whether Campus Safety can arrest or not simply because if the students are caught, the Kirkland Police will take matters into their own capable hands. The power doesn’t affect incentives or risk and therefore won’t affect a criminal’s decision. If the goal of the officer upgrades was to provide a deterrent for either of these two crimes, I just don’t see it happening.
That leaves us with our drug and alcohol violations. If the new officer power was meant to reduce these instances, the policy starts to lose ground. Hamilton’s campus is known to be quite liberal in its treatment of student violations in these areas. There are all-campus parties that aren’t exactly age exclusive, campus-wide “crawls,” and let’s face it: marijuana is around.
On top of that, the Administration just repealed the hard alcohol policy this year, and our own President Stewart supports the government bodies reconsidering the drinking age. Hamilton clearly is an institution which promotes this type of forward thinking. Why then, would we spend time and money training officers and providing resources to move backwards? The decision to upgrade officers seems to contradict Hamilton’s ideology.
Therefore, the only type of crime that Campus Safety can deter is mostly victimless. But what if violent crime does break out? There is a completely capable police force right around the corner that I’ve seen utilized a number of times, even in the short time that I’ve been around.
Why does Hamilton need its own police force to deter violent crime that just doesn’t exist? Other similarly safe areas like public schools don’t have their own patrol just as a matter of course, so why does our Campus Safety need the ability to arrest?
Ultimately, Hamilton College is already a very safe place, and increasing the responsibilities of Campus Safety seems to be an unnecessary use of resources that contradicts other aspects of campus policy. Hopefully our outcome from this new policy will be similar to that of guinea pig Union College, who claims to see beneficial results in mostly only back office issues rather than among the student body.
However, heeding the words of our forefathers, I become weary of any increase of security, especially one that threatens to interfere with the student body as much as this one does.