Despite the recent flare ups between students, Public Safety and the Middletown Police Department (MPD), unpublicized collaboration regularly takes place between these three entities, especially lately.

“A lot of students don’t know that there even is communication going on between Wesleyan and Middletown Police,” said MPD Lieutenant Rob Siena, who acts as a direct liaison with Public Safety.

According to Director of Public Safety David Meyer, six students get arrested during an average year. Despite the notable exception of a recent student arrest on Home Avenue, Siena said that this year has not been particularly remarkable in terms of disputes between students and local police.

“It’s been a really decent year, no major issues,” Siena said, “Really nothing came our way that wasn’t workable.”

This semester has seen increased efforts towards interaction between Public Safety, MPD and the Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC), a sub-committee of the Wesleyan Students Assembly’s (WSA) Community Outreach Committee (COCo).

Meetings between the three groups began in earnest after the breaking up of an event at the Psi Upsilon fraternity house last September, in which the presence of a canine unit raised concerns about MPD’s and Public Safety’s response methods.

A campus-wide forum was held before spring break to address this incident, as well as general University-MPD relations.

“The general gist of [the forum], if you will, is that when [the MPD] respond to students, the students they are trying to address are not always sober and not always cooperative with their requests,” said Dean of Student Services Mike Whaley. “You know when police respond, it’s either a noise complaint or a street obstruction. There’s a reason why they’re here.”

“This is not to generalize. For some students that’s not the case,” he added. “Sometimes what happens is that a few drunk people make the situation more challenging for everybody.”

Whaley also commented on the misconception that the campus acts as a safe haven from the law.

“You have some students who think that the Middletown Police Department have no right to be on Pine or Fountain Avenues because it’s Wesleyan property,” Whaley said. “But the reality is that’s not the case. They’re city streets.”

Although attendance at the event was fairly low, some saw the mere fact of discussion as a positive step.

“At that meeting, there was a major change in attitude,” said PSAC chair Nishita Roy ’07. “I think they were excited to meet with us. Once you make suggestions, it shows that you put thought into those suggestions.”

Besides the forum, COCo and Public Safety officers have since increased the number of dorm and woodframe house visits, and Public Safety and MPD collaborated in writing an informational Wespeak. Both safety organizations provide snacks for students in the Science Library during finals week.

“We’re trying to get more of a one-on-one relationship so that when students have an issue we’ll hear about it directly from them,” Meyer said. He mentioned the “good rapport” built up between Public Safety and members of Eclectic from having worked together in managing so many events.

One important reason for on-going outreach the regular student turnover rate and the need to reach out to incoming freshman classes.

“Until I joined PSAC, I did not stop to think how frustrating it can be for P-Safe and the MPD to have to start over every year and rebuild their relationship with a new group of students,” Roy said.

In addition, students are often unaware of how seemingly benign actions can unintentionally involve the intervention of safety officers. Siena recounted how, in the past, officers have responded to perceived threats, which in several cases turned out to be student film projects using smoke machines or plastic weapons.

“The students mean well, but they need to be educated that it’s a lot of time and effort and resources for us to follow up on silly misunderstandings,” Siena said. “It doesn’t mean anything to us that these things are going on, but at least we’re aware of them.”

But for all the communication attempts being made, student participation has consistently been low. While the beginning of weekly WSA meetings is dedicated to specific, non-WSA issues and students can also arrange with the WSA coordinator to have individual concerns added to the weekly agenda, non-WSA students rarely participate unless they happen to be involved in a specific resolution.

At a Wednesday night discussion session, held by COCo to voice suggestions on improving relations between safety officials and students, one Argus reporter was present — and no one else.

“One of the greatest issues we’ve had is trying to get students involved,” PSAC member Liana Woskie said. “No one’s here.”

“We’ll continue to make the effort,” Roy said, “We’re willing to listen if students are willing to come.”

Meyer noted that Public Safety, too, needed to step up efforts to be more visible on campus.

“I think we’ve done a good job of getting out the crime prevention message,” Meyer said. “Now we need to go a step beyond that, to start building relationships with students and student groups, even going to student group meetings so that students see us as involved in the community.”

Whereas previously several students were directly involved in Public Safety operations, for example acting as safety shuttle dispatchers, this is no longer the case.

“Over the years there’s been a decline in students working for Public Safety, and in the past few years there haven’t been any,” Meyer said. “We’re looking at alternatives, like maybe a student patrol, who could represent eyes and ears for us and serve as a liaison.”

An anonymous tip-line is also under consideration for next year, as are ideas for making dialogue between safety officers and students more regular occurrences. Next semester, all first-year students, and possibly the entire student population, will receive wallet-sized cards with information about student rights and the details of Public Safety’s jurisdiction.

“[We hope] to make [interaction] less reactionary and more of an open, consistent thing,” said PSAC member Inslee Coddington ’10.

While students do not stand beyond the law, several student groups are concerned that Middletown residents are relatively more vulnerable to disputes with police officers. Writer’s Bloc, WesPrep, Ujamaa, Nosotras, Invisible Men and the Traverse Square program plan to bring poet Anthony K-Swift to facilitate a workshop on May 11th for students and members of the Traverse Square community.

“This is not an anti-police workshop,” said Marc Arenas ’07, a member of WesPrep. “It’s about knowing your rights.”

“We want to be quite clear that this is not just a Wesleyan issue,” Arena added. “It is much more prevalent outside the campus than here, and it affects other populations more heavily than the Wesleyan population.”

Argenys Taveras ’08, of Invisible Men and the Traverse Square program, emphasized the importance of holding the dialogue in Traverse Square.

“People need to have this kind of information,” Taveras said. “For us, it’s something that maybe only happens two to three times a year, but for them it may be something that happens on a monthly basis. At least when [the MPD] come[s] up here, we have our big Wesleyan name to protect us.”