We applaud the Fountain Avenue Working Group for their report released yesterday on last May’s incident on Fountain Ave. Instead of forgetting about it, the administration commissioned this working group and kept it in student and public awareness. We also appreciate that the report examined the issue through a wide lens, recording Public Safety, student, and Middletown Police accounts and attempting to not isolate any of the parties involved.
It is difficult to truly disagree with the report’s broad (maybe too broad) suggestions, and we particularly agree that “Public Safety’s current protocol for requesting assistance from Middletown Police [should] be reviewed.” However, we would like to put forward some more specific recommendations for dealing with the ambiguities and confusion regarding the relationship between students, Public Safety and the Middletown Police Department (MPD).
Generally speaking, the MPD should not serve as Public Safety’s muscle. Public Safety officers are more familiar with the campus, and they are more accustomed to dealing with students. It only makes sense that they should be the ones directly dealing with student violations and student safety on campus. This more specifically applies to breaking up crowds on campus: when Public Safety attempts to disperse nonviolent student gatherings, regardless of how large, the MPD should not be called. Instead, Public Safety can look to improving their own methods of crowd control. They can, for instance, think strategically about how they break up parties. If five or six parties on Fountain are theoretically all broken up at once, students will naturally crowd onto the street, creating the kind of mass gathering that leads to increased tensions between students and Public Safety officers. The University itself should host more large-scale events in the evenings, particularly at the end of the academic year, when students are more prone to planning and attending mass parties. The successful events held during senior week, another time of year when students are more prone to celebrate in large groups, could serve as models.
Furthermore, every time Public Safety calls the MPD, both the time and reason for the call should be recorded in the weekly Public Safety Report. Additionally, before Public Safety is allowed to call the MPD, they should also be required to call a dean or other prominent University official to gain approval. We commend Public Safety for its recent efforts on campus to create better student-officer relations, such as its Adopt-A-Dorm initiative. This could provide the sense of familiarity that works to ease tensions between officers and students.
We as students also need to re-evaluate some of our own actions. If we say we want respect from the University and from Public Safety, we should act responsibly. If there are legitimate safety issues when large groups of students temporarily block city streets, we should respect those.
WSA President Mike Pernick is voting to create a commission in reaction to the recommendations listed at the end of the report. We hope that this commission is approved and comes up with some concrete policies to propose to the University, and that the administration considers their proposals. Maybe then we can finally create a set of written guidelines for Public Safety to follow and for students to respect.
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