The issues of gun control and public safety on campus have been spotlighted by Portland State’s student government this year, and now PSU students have made their opinions known.
Students weigh in on campus safety
The issues of gun control and public safety on campus have been spotlighted by Portland State’s student government this year, and now PSU students have made their opinions known.
The results of the Associated Students of Portland State University campus safety survey were released recently.
The goal of the survey was to “gain a holistic view of how students feel about campus safety,” the report stated.
According to the study, students are still divided on the contentious issue of whether PSU should have its own sworn police force, with 34 percent of respondents answering “strongly disagree” or “disagree” and 36 percent responding “strongly agree” or “agree.”
Students were almost equally divided on the issue of whether Campus Public Safety officers should be armed.
“Armed campus safety officers are completely superfluous to the type of…
crime at Portland State. We have a problem with sexual assault, not with gun crime,” said one anonymous respondent in the survey comments section.
The survey showed that while a majority of students agreed with the statement “I feel safe on campus,” most students are unaware of what CPSO does and how to reach them.
Respondents also said they wanted more blue light emergency phones to be installed on campus and more student oversight of CPSO.
Based on these results, ASPSU has submitted recommendations to the administration for areas of improvement. ASPSU did not create recommendations about a sworn police force or arming CPSO officers because there was no clear consensus among students.
“The recommendations are pretty firmly based on the results of the survey,” ASPSU Legislative Affairs Director David Coburn said.
Coburn, who worked with ASPSU President Tiffany Dollar on the project, said the recommendations are a series of small steps rather than drastic changes.
CPSO Director Phil Zerzan is a strong advocate of a sworn police force on campus. While noting that the issue is a very divisive one, Zerzan said the step is necessary due to the complexity of policing an urban campus.
“There are significant service gaps,” Zerzan said.
According to Zerzan, PSU is the only school out of other comparable urban schools that doesn’t have a sworn police force.
However, ASPSU believes it would be better to enact a series of smaller changes before graduating to such big ones.
“There are a lot of intermediate steps before that,” Coburn said of Zerzan’s suggestion.
One step would be creating an outreach and awareness campaign so students would be more informed about CPSO. The report recommended that CPSO be present at orientations and suggested that CPSO’s contact information be displayed more visibly on campus.
ASPSU also recommended that more blue light emergency phones be installed on the campus. Forty-four percent of survey respondents answered “strongly disagree” or “disagree” to the statement “There are enough blue light phones on campus.” A mere 18 percent answered “strongly agree” or “agree.”
Fifty-two percent of respondents thought students should have some oversight over CPSO. In response to this, ASPSU proposed the creation of a permanent advisory board that would holistically evaluate campus safety.
The advisory board would have a diverse membership made up of administration officials, campus service staff members and student representatives, including ASPSU officers, representatives from several student resource centers and a student-at-large representative. Coburn says the involvement of students in campus security advising would help the PSU student body build their trust in CPSO.
The survey was conducted during winter term, with a total of 2,312 students surveyed. The full report can be found on the ASPSU website at aspsu.pdx.edu.
Interesting suggestions ASPSU. CPSO does attend orientation as far as I know. Also I am reasonably sure that this oversight board is a requirement of a campus police department; so lets get on with it. Now I have to say that the question on the survey of arming campus public safety officers was comical at best. I am not sure when in the last several years anyone has suggested that. Certainly I know that is not the plan that Chief Zerzan has proposed. I know he mentioned that several times at the forum that ASPSU held. He did however suggest a campus police department with all of the tools that a police department has at its disposal. This is however typical of ASPSU. I also find it interesting that students want more blue light phones. These phones are rarely used to begin with and do nothing to address the central issue of the usefulness of the personnel you are summoning. But I understand that seeing them makes people feel safer. As a final thought I would suggest that if ASPSU want to actually have their voices heard they speak with the President’s Task Force on Campus Safety. They are the ones that will be making the decision for the future of the campus. But please bring facts and not a bunch of opinions ASPSU, they didn’t work at your forum and they will not work with the task force.
I understand this perspective, Chief Zerzan actually asked the ASPSU to weigh in, so we were asked for our opinions, also i think you’ve under rated a public awareness campaign, and misunderstood the issue at hand, a full-fledged police force does include guns and training for their use. Also people not knowing how to contact CPSO makes it difficult for them to be effective.