It is no secret that the University of Oregon suffers from a lack of funding. Any student who has attended more than a year is aware that tuition is constantly rising. The problem of funding is not limited to the cost of attendance, however.
As the Emerald reported this week, the University pays only four Eugene Police Department officers to patrol the University and can not afford to pay for more.
There are many reasons for the lack of police presence, but it is clear that one officer per 5,000 students is simply not enough coverage.
While it is difficult to imagine any Virginia Tech-style tragedies on a campus where the dining halls serve cage-free eggs and students walking past the EMU are greeted with free hugs, the fact is that the University could be left ill-prepared to deal with such emergencies.
A larger police presence would probably not prevent such emergencies; however, in such a case, it would be essential to have officers who know their way around the campus grounds and the buildings. Imagine trying to respond to an emergency in a confusing building such as Gerlinger Hall if you were unfamiliar with the building.
Department of Public Safety Director Kevin Williams has said he wants to conduct training for EPD officers to familiarize them with the buildings. This is to be commended, but even officers who have taken a training can’t compare to those who work in the buildings every day and are familiar with them.
A big problem, of course, is that state law prohibits universities from having their own police departments (hence the reason DPS employees do not carry guns and are not official police officers). The state should recognize the importance of providing adequate police presence on a campus of 20,000 and either give the University the right to have a fully-functioning police department on campus. Officers who work solely on campus and are based here know the property and the campus community better than any EPD officer.
Oregon State University has 10 sworn police officers for about 19,000 students. That campus is bound by the same state law preventing its own police department (and has just as little state funding), but it manages to attain more than twice as many officers as the University.
As it is, situations arise that DPS can not respond to – if a driver is stopped for driving under the influence, for example, EPD must come conduct the sobriety test and arrest the driver. If the few officers who patrol campus are busy with something like a traffic stop, they are not available to respond to more serious incidents.
However, it is unacceptable to leave a campus of 20,000 relatively unpatrolled. We don’t need an officer on every corner, but students do need to know that if they need a police officer, one will be there.