Some students say they like to go to college to get away from the real world. But in recent years, some harsh realities have popped up on college campuses–incidents that often involve a current or former student with a gun targeting classmates or a professor.
In January, for example, a student at a Virginia law school shot six people, killing three. After such incidents, debate ensues, frequently at unaffected schools, about how to prevent campus violence. The discussion often centers on whether public-safety officers should carry guns to protect students and staff.
“Campus law enforcement has become a specialized form of law enforcement,” said Rex Rakow, chief of police at the University of Notre Dame, which has had an armed force since 1977.
Other colleges with armed police forces include Harvard University, St. Louis University, Tulane University in New Orleans and Creighton University in Omaha. And officers at some of the biggest colleges in Illinois, including University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and Illinois State University at Bloomington-Normal, carry weapons.
However, DePaul and Loyola Universities in Chicago still have public safety departments staffed by unarmed officers. Campus security staffs at the three public universities in Iowa and officers at all colleges in Oregon and Rhode Island are not armed.
The arguments for and against officers carrying weapons run deep, reflecting a desire on one side to protect students and staff and on the other side to maintain a culture of academic freedom.
The U.S. Justice Department estimates that three-quarters of colleges and universities with at least 10,000 students have armed their officers, who often are employed in a public-safety department. In a 1995 survey of 680 colleges with 2,500 or more students, about 64 percent of them armed their officers, according to a justice department spokesman.
And in a 1995 survey, the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators found that 91 percent of colleges and universities with at least 15,000 students have taken the matter a step further. The association, which has more than 1,000 member schools in 15 countries, found that public safety agencies on those campuses have the same powers as those of a municipal police department.
Proponents say that arming an officer is a necessary step as weapons-related incidents have increased, and the types of crime, from murder to drug dealing, have changed. In the two years (1999 and 2000) in which colleges and universities have been required to report crime statistics to the U.S. Department of Education, the number of incidents involving illegal weapon possession has increased to 5,670 from 2,257.
Advocates also say an armed campus police force can more efficiently and effectively respond to emergencies and that the ability to carry weapons help ensure the safety of the officers.
Policy cites defensive purposes
The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, a group that includes college public safety officials, support arming officers. The association urges schools to adopt “clear policy statements” that the weapons are to be used for defensive purposes.
“If they are to serve as police officers, they should be armed,” said Oliver J. Clark, association president and chief of police at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “It only makes sense that if you are going to enforce the laws of a state, you need to have the tools to perform the duties of a police officer.”
Opponents say it is unnecessary to arm officers because college campuses have low crime rates. (U.S. Department of Education statistics on negligent manslaughter showed such incidents actually decreased to 37 from 43 from 1999 to 2000.)
Another argument is that the introduction of guns onto a campus, even those carried by security personnel, has the possibility of causing more problems than it solves.
Finally, opponents say colleges require an “atypical” approach to policing, emphasizing protection over enforcement. Loyola, with 12,900 undergraduate and graduate students, doesn’t arm its officers, who provide coverage for two campuses in Chicago and at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood. Officials in the public safety department favor arming their 34 officers, but Loyola’s presidential cabinet has decided that isn’t necessary, according to university spokesman Bud Jones, who said the issue was last discussed about a year ago.
“It never really went very far,” Jones said of the debate. “We don’t have a violent atmosphere and the Chicago Police Department works very closely with our public safety officers.”
Calling on Chicago police
The Public Safety Department at DePaul, which has 21,363 students at its two city campuses and six locations in the suburbs, deals mostly with “crimes of opportunity,” said department director Bob Wachowski. These include the theft of backpacks or laptop computers left unattended.
The department’s 60 officers carry pepper spray and batons. In Chicago, the agency patrols the downtown campus on foot and officers either walk or drive around the Lincoln Park site, he said.
“We have decided that we can best serve our campus by staying a public safety department,” Wachowski said. “Plus, we get great responses from the Chicago Police Department.”
Northwestern University in Evanston has armed its officers since 1986, the year that the state legislature passed a law allowing the practice, said a university spokesman.
The force at the University of Illinois-Chicago is also armed, said spokesman Bill Burton, noting that it was the school’s officers who in March detained a Wisconsin man who was accused of stashing cyanide in a Chicago CTA subway.
Controversy in Milwaukee
Last fall, Marquette University in Milwaukee armed some of its officers in the Department of Public Safety after campus officials and students debated the issue. A survey found that only DePaul and Marquette in the 12-school Conference USA athletic association didn’t arm their forces, according to Larry Rickard, the department’s chief.
The department has armed 36 of its 65 officers, providing weapons to 25 patrol officers and 11 command staff members. Those who don’t carry weapons include officers assigned to residence halls, said university spokesman Ben Tracy.
Many of the officers who are carrying weapons have experience working for police departments, including Milwaukee’s, or in the military, Rickard said. Marquette officers who would carry guns were required to undergo an FBI background check and fulfill a state-mandated 36 hours of training.
Wisconsin also requires police officers to complete six hours of refresher training per year. Marquette, however, has decided to require an additional 20 hours per year, Rickard said.
“We were committed to the goal of keeping our students and staff and campus safe,” he said. “After careful study, we reached the conclusion that an already-safe environment could be made safer still if a portion of the public safety department were armed.”
The proposal to arm the officers met with student opposition. In a referendum conducted by the student government association, 59 percent of the 2,000 students who voted opposed the proposal.
“We felt that the student body was not interested in the idea of arming the public safety officers and that it was not a necessary means to help protect students,” said Jim Schenkelberg, a student senator who played a role in scheduling the referendum measure.
Rickard said that through March, no officer has had to use a gun, and Schenkelberg said student discussion on the topic has died down..
“The general perception is that [the guns] have done nothing and, in general, I don’t think people feel safer because they are there,” said Schenkelberg, a senior from Iowa.
Notre Dame’s officers have never had to fire a gun, said Rakow, but officers have had to disarm offenders, he said.
“Our experience has been good,” Rakow said. “Students who come to our campus from around the country and the world are used to seeing the police in their community being armed. So it doesn’t seem to raise a big issue.”
A debate in Iowa
The officers at the three state universities in Iowa do not carry weapons, a policy that has caused debate between public safety officials and administrators, including university presidents and the Iowa Board of Regents. The policy affects officers at Iowa, Iowa State and the University of Northern Iowa, who attend the state’s police academy, receiving the same weapons training as other law enforcement officers as part of the academy curriculum.
In 1969, regents approved a no-firearm policy, whose lone exception is assignments of “extreme danger,” which would require the permission of a university president. (No exemption has been made to date.) Even after a University of Iowa graduate student shot and killed five people and wounded a sixth before killing himself in 1991, the presidents made no move to change the policy.
The university presidents have argued that the campuses are safer without officers carrying weapons. But public safety officials at the three schools say their officers, who carry pepper spray and nightsticks, should be fully equipped in order to response to increasingly more dangerous situations found on college campuses.
In late 1999, the student senate at Northern Iowa overwhelmingly voted to ask the board of regents to change the policy, but the board has declined to address the issue, a spokesman said.
Tasers allowed
In January, the board did accept a proposal allowing campus officers to carry an M26 Advanced Air Taser, which looks like a semi-automatic weapon but has the same effect as a stun gun. The officers will begin carrying the weapon this spring, said Chuck Green, director of public safety at the University of Iowa.
The device, which has a range of 21 feet, will help officers confronted by an unarmed offender with superior strength, by someone with a striking instrument such as a bat or by someone who has a sharp-edged instrument, such as a knife, Green said. The device won’t help in a confrontation with a gun-carrying suspect, he said. “This will give the officer more protection, but we don’t look at it as a steppingstone,” Green said.
According to Greg Nichols, executive director for the University of Iowa Board of Regents, “what was striking about this debate was the absence of that opposition from faculty, staff and students.
“The campus communities were thoroughly consulted about this and the issue was well publicized before it was brought to the board,” he said. “But it didn’t produce any big negative reaction like you might have expected.” That reaction may signal the increasing trend in campus protection, toward arming officers, said Terry Hartle, senior vice president for the American Council on Education, which serves as a trade association for 1,800 colleges and universities. Students, professors, administrators and others who are part of a college community increasingly see the issue in light of what is needed to ensure safety, he said.
“The way to have that is by having professionally trained and equipped law enforcement officials patrolling the campus,” Hartle said. “Over the last 15 years, the differences between local police departments and campus security officials have increasingly narrowed. Indeed, the days of when Barney Fife provided campus security, as many Baby Boomers remember from their college days, are long since past.”
