A public campus safety forum originally scheduled to take place in late April was recently delayed until early May, and is now looking at being pushed back until this fall due to concerns of attendance and scheduling.
“We’ve received feedback asking not to have the safety forum on a Friday out of fear that students may not attend,” said Scott Gallagher, PSU’s director of communications. “So, for now we’re delaying it probably until fall due to availability and schedules.”
Gallagher stressed the importance of students attending and participating in the forum in order to figure out what options are best for the PSU campus.
“This is the opportunity to be informed and involved,” Gallagher said. “The forum is for the PSU community—faculty, staff, students and also the surrounding community,” because decisions made here will affect these groups.
PSU President Wim Wiewel assigned the Task Force to research the different options available to PSU to increase safety and security on campus last April.
The first recommendation in the report made by the TFCS is to have access to sworn, armed police officers on campus—an option that will be discussed during the forum along with the other recommendations made in the report.
Gallagher said there isn’t a timeline yet for when the changes will be implemented, because a vital part of the decision making is receiving feedback from all members of the PSU community, especially students.
“We’re trying to make this as transparent as possible,” Gallagher said. “There will be an ongoing discussion [about the recommendations] because changes like these take time to [be] implemented.”
The university is trying to reach out to the campus in new and creative ways, Gallagher said.
“[The university wants to] get the PSU community involved in this discussion, get them engaged in addressing concerns they have, improving safety on campus and educating people,” he said.
After the forum, Gallagher said those attending will be directed to the TFCS’s website, where there is a link available to provide feedback about the recommendations made in the TFCS report and about the discussions occurring in the forum.
It may be difficult to get through all the recommendations and their potential impacts in one forum meeting, Gallagher added.
“The hardest thing to [do] will be simplifying the options because there are already some that are no longer available to us,” like contracting with Oregon State Police, he said.
To read the TFCS report in full, visit pdx.edu/insidepsu/the-future-of-campus-security.
