Plans to appoint a full-time director at the University’s Department of Public Safety will remain on the fence for at least a few more months, but Vice President for Administration Dan Williams hopes to resolve the situation by the time he retires in July 2005.
Former DPS Associate Director Tom Hicks has served as interim director since April 1, 2003. The interim position cannot be extended past December 2005 under the University’s policies, said Williams, who is Hicks’ direct supervisor.
“It’s a little unusual to have someone in an interim position for this length of time,” Williams said. “I asked Tom to be interim until such time has passed to decide whether we’re going to continue to maintain the status quo or whether we’re going to make some changes in the nature of the department’s activities and responsibilities.”
Williams said he wasn’t entirely satisfied with the University and Eugene Police
Department’s relationship when former DPS Director Tom Fitzpatrick retired in winter 2003 because EPD focused on general crime while the University prioritized combating property loss. But making changes to DPS became less urgent when a new EPD police chief was appointed in January 2004 and when Sgt. Mark Montes was hired in March 2004 to lead the EPD campus security team, he said.
“The question we need to answer is: Do we need to make changes in the authorities and the size of our DPS staff in order to be as effective in providing security for the campus?” Williams said. “My feeling early on was that we probably do. But when things began to improve in our relationship with the Eugene Police Department, I thought we ought to give it a bit of time to see if we will be satisfied with the way things are.”
Hicks, who has worked for DPS for about 20 years, said he will continue to expand and improve the department regardless of whether he becomes a candidate for the official director’s position.
A $10,275 stipend has bumped his $68,495 associate director salary to $78,770 annually. Williams said the increase offsets Hicks’ additional responsibilities because he is “really doing almost two people’s jobs.”
Since Hicks became interim director, the department has created a public safety
advisory group to examine how DPS functions in regard to the University’s needs, expanded the authority of officers to issue municipal citations and started to review the school’s emergency response plan and parking needs.
“It’s not just a caretaker position,” he said. “I think the expectation from Dan Williams is that I take the steps necessary for the
department, regardless of my interim role. I like working at the UO and I love working at the Department of Public Safety, but I
honestly want to see what’s best for this department and for the University. And if it’s decided that they want to bring somebody in with some fresh ideas, I would support that fully.”
Hicks said the search for a full-time director will likely be national. Williams said he’s uncertain when the University will form a committee to find candidates for the position, but he hopes to know within a few months what type of action to take.
“There’s no point in beginning to search until we’re clear in our own minds exactly what the responsibilities will be of the director,” Williams said. “My hesitancy in all this has nothing to do with the performance of Tom Hicks or anybody else in the department at all.”
Fourteen patrol officers, three sergeants and one lieutenant comprise the campus’s uniformed patrol, which is supplemented by three EPD officers and one EPD sergeant, Hicks said. There are 38 employees at DPS.
And with no associate director appointed to cover the duties left by Hicks’ appointment to interim director, the department’s three managing sergeants have absorbed some additional duties, Hicks said.
Parking and Transportation Manager Rand Stamm said he hasn’t noticed much of an increase in his responsibilities.
“We’ve always done business the same way,” Stamm said. “When something needs to get done,
we spread out the duties so it gets done. We look on Tom as the
director. He’s done an excellent job.”

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